


All Other Lights Go Out

by AlulaSpeaks



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Season/Series 12, Bottom Sam, Canon-Typical Violence, First Time, M/M, Sam Winchester Big Bang 2017, Trials of Hell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-11
Updated: 2017-03-12
Packaged: 2018-10-03 02:31:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 38,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10233731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlulaSpeaks/pseuds/AlulaSpeaks
Summary: Caught between the London Chapter House's politics, a strange and ancient force that visits him in his cell, and vivid dreams of his dead brother searching for him, Sam must decide what kind of legacy he wants to leave behind.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story is set immediately after season 11 and assumes that Lucifer was killed in the battle with Amara.
> 
> This is my first ever contribution to a big bang challenge, and writing this was a true challenge and a great learning experience. The easiest thing about it was working with my wonderful artist. Casquecest was a true pleasure to work with and her art is just incredibly lovely. I couldn't be happier. Please be sure to leave her some love on her [art master post](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10233911).

Sam blinks awake into utter darkness, instantly alert. He is not alone. There is a presence pressing against the bars from the outside of his cell. It does not cross the threshold, but he can feel it there, watchful in the pitch black.

The skin of his arms tightens, pricks into goosebumps. The hairs on the nape of his neck rise with such force that each individual strand aches as they stand on end. There is no sound save the familiar plinking from the faucet in the small sink beside the bed. Nothing moves.

Sam takes a careful, measured breath and sits up, scoots to the head of his cot to put a wall at his back and one at his side. The dark of night is so thick that he can't judge distance or depth, can't even see the shape of his own body curled up in front of him, but whatever is out there doesn't have the same limitations. He feels it track his movements. Its attention presses, like a lead weight, lingers where his fingers are gripping his knees and moves to track the nervous ticking of his jaw as he clenches his teeth.

Why it doesn't cross the barrier of the cell bars, Sam can only guess. Iron, perhaps. More likely it wasn't told to. More likely it was only sent to unnerve Sam, to soften him up for later interrogation. Either way it stays there, oppressive and expectant, toothed in the hungry dark.

Sam is weaponless, but not defenseless. His options for retaliation are limited to his physical strength and whatever spell-work he can remember that requires only blood and incantations. Which doesn't leave him with much more than exorcisms, and containment or banishment sigils. So he waits, and he listens.

His body flashes hot and cold and hot again as the pressure in the room ratchets up to unbearable levels. There's a rush of air and a shuddering crack as the pressure crests and breaks, sucking into one point outside his cell, coalescing. It hovers there for a moment and he feels it like eyes on him. And then with a sigh, the feeling, whatever it was, is gone.

Sam has no way of knowing what was just here, but he has to assume that the London chapter house is just as well warded as their own bunker and that whatever it was, was either very powerful, or was let in. Speculation, at this point, is useless. Only time will tell if this presence was some new interrogation tactic and Sam has to be at his best to decipher it. He tries to settle his racing heart, count his breathing. It doesn't work. He sits, knees drawn to his chest, to wait out the long night.

...

Sam's breakfast is brought to him every morning by the same young woman. She's petite, tops out at 5'2", and is solidly built. There is strength in her arms but she carries herself as if afraid to take up too much space and she has a softness about her, a kind of wary intelligence that instantly endears her to Sam. It doesn't hurt that her oversized, black-rimmed glasses and her blonde shoulder length waves make her look even younger. There's something in her of Mary and Jessica both, tailor made to worm beneath Sam's defenses. She feels exactly like a trap, like walking into a hunt expecting a haunting and finding a demon instead.

She hasn't hardly said a word to Sam, just sets the food onto the little shelf built into the slot next to the cell door. Once she asked for the old tray when Sam had left it lying on the floor by the bed, head ducked and blush blooming on her cheeks. She doesn't taunt, doesn't sneer. Sam likes that about her.

She looks tired today, a smudge of shadow under her eyes. Sam stands slow, watches her tense and take a step back from the bars, just out of his reach even if he managed to wedge his shoulder through. She's cautious but not frightened. Sam begrudgingly likes that about her, too.

He takes the tray, says, "thanks," and sits on the end of his cot, the tray balanced on his knees.

"Oatmeal. My favorite." Sam says, deadpan and flashes her a wry grin, one broad enough to bring out his dimples. He makes a show of tucking his hair behind his ear, keeps a loose posture, and glances up at her through his lashes to see the hint of a blush in her cheeks. If they're going to send someone like her to try and endear herself to him, well, he's not above using the same tactics.

“What’s your name?” Sam asks.

She shakes her head, says, “I’m not supposed to talk to you.”

Sam smiles at her again. “Come on, who am I going to tell? I’m just asking for a little conversation. What harm could it do?”

She shrugs.

“They didn’t give you a reason?”

“I didn’t ask,” she says.

“That seems strange. You’re a Man – or Woman, I guess – of Letters, aren’t you? I thought asking questions was the whole point.” Sam tucks into his oatmeal then, watching her from the corner of her eye.

She stands there for a minute more in silence, longer than she has any other day for the week he’s been here and Sam counts it as a win. Maybe they're both playing games. He just hopes he's the better player.

...

They come for him around noon. The same young woman who brings his food approaches his cell with an unremarkable man. He has short, tightly curled black hair, wears perfectly pressed pants, a blazer, and oxford shoes. He glances only briefly at Sam and says nothing, which suits Sam just fine. He pushes a pair of thick metal handcuffs through the slot, a gold wedding band glinting against the deep brown of his skin.

Sam rolls back the sleeves of the gray shirt he’s been given to wear and turns the cuffs over in his hands. They are etched with runes and sigils, only some of which he recognizes. He slips on the cuffs, and the woman takes a key from her pocket and unlocks the door with a twist and a whispered spell. The etchings in the cell bars flare red until the lock clicks and the door swings open, then they turn dark and quiescent.

Sam steps into the cell block hall. There are only three cells here, connected by a narrow concrete hallway that leads to a heavy metal door, which stands open, waiting for them to pass through.

They enter a short hallway lit by the yellow light of incandescent bulbs, a soft relief after the harsh white fluorescence of the lights in Sam’s cell. The hallway leads out to the main room of the complex. As near as Sam can tell, he has been transported to the British Men of Letter’s London Chapter House. Much like the bunker in Kansas, this chapter house has no windows, most likely underground, but where the bunker lay dormant for decades, this one is very much alive.

They emerge onto the second floor of the great hall, a huge circular room that makes up the library and map room of this chapter house. The second level is a mezzanine that circles the room. On one side it is bordered by a wall whose every square inch of space is covered in bookshelves bursting with books, some old and skin-bound, others new with shiny jacket covers, and display cases filled with weapons and artifacts. On the other side, it is separated from the open air by an intricately wrought iron railing that looks down onto the map table in the center of the lower floor and the six sturdy, mahogany study tables that surround it. The whole space is opulently adorned in reds and golds and has the feeling of walking along a theater balcony, giving the space below a strange performative air. The study tables are always populated by a scattering of men and women bent over their books.

There are five initiates studying in the hall today, but the usual collegial air is stilted and anxious. Four of the initiates are spread two and two at adjacent tables. They keep shooting nervous looks at the man sitting alone, as far away from the others as possible. He is murmuring to himself, but he’s too far away for Sam to hear what he's saying. All Sam can see of the man is his too pale skin and his slicked back black hair. He looks up and catches Sam watching and he tilts his chin up, a sneer twisting his mouth. Sam is instantly reminded of Cuthbert Sinclair’s smug superiority and the thought makes him cringe. One Cuthbert was more than enough.

“Mind your charge and his wandering eyes, Mary Jane.” Cuthbert 2.0 calls up.

The woman beside Sam, Mary Jane it seems, flinches. She shoots the man on Sam’s other side a worried look.

“It’s fine,” he says, “not your fault.”

But Mary Jane still looks nervous. She sneaks a glance at Sam through her eyelashes and chews at her lower lip.

Sam looks away, pretends he didn't notice the exchange. He goes back to cataloging the room, scanning across the three entryways that branch off the mezzanine. Behind Sam is the hallway to the cell block. To his right are the stairs that lead up to the main entry or down to the first level. To his left is the hallway they turn down, which leads to the council chambers where Sam spends his days being questioned.

Mary Jane and her escort knock on the council room doors and wait for admittance. The doors are heavy, solid wood monstrosities that stand ten feet tall, from floor to ceiling. Intricate carvings rise out of the deep red wood, polished and gleaming. On the left door, the hordes of Hell swarm from the fires of the pit, rising in a twisted mass from the bottom corner. On the right, the armies of Heaven descend, spears and shields held before them as they fly into battle. In the center, forever separated by the gap between the doors, Michael and Lucifer clash, blades aimed for each other’s hearts, wings billowing behind them. The craftsmanship is exquisite and deeply unsettling. The faces are picked out in such fine detail that they seem lifelike, so detailed that Sam can see something of his own face in Lucifer’s. It makes his stomach turn every time, but better to look there than to look at the carving of Michael and recognize the line of Dean’s jaw.

Sam’s eyes skitter away and he tries not to wonder how old the doors are, what divine inspiration influenced the artist, what angel sat on his shoulder whispering of their plans, their grand manipulations. Hundreds of years of work, the hands of Heaven and Hell at play all to bring about the birth of brother vessels. The Boy King and the Michael Sword.

None of that matters now. Their plan fell apart, and now Sam's the only one left.

Sam is torn from his thoughts by the creak of the doors as they swing open of their own accord. All five council members are ranged around the long, curved table set on a raised dais at the front of the room. They lean forward in their high-backed wooden chairs as Sam is led to the plain metal chair bolted to the floor in the middle of the room. He sits and submits to being shackled by the ankle to a bolt in the floor. The chain is long enough that he could stand and walk two feet in any direction, but even at its furthest reach, he’d still be three feet from the council table.

Mary Jane bends to lock the shackle around his ankle. She stoops in front of him, head even with his knee. It would be so easy. A part of him cringes for her. She should be better trained, he isn’t secured yet, a knee to the temple and she’d be crumpled on the ground and he’d be loose but for the handcuffs. Be more careful. Someone should teach her to be more careful.

When she stands up, she looks him in the eye, more directly then she has yet and there is something there. Something assessing, as if she knows the risk she took, the way some monster would have taken advantage of it. But she blinks and ducks her head that edge is gone, leaving behind the same nervous shyness Sam has become accustomed to.

Mary Jane turns to the council, makes a gesture that Sam can’t see and Tompkins, the man seated at the center of the council, raises one overly manicured white eyebrow.

“Very well,” he says with some annoyance, “you may go.”

Mary Jane and her escort slip out of the room. The man whispers a command as they leave and the doors swing shut, leaving Sam alone with the council members. They are all at least two decades older than Sam, and if it weren’t for the blood red robes they wear over their suits and sweaters, they would look like a panel of professors straight out of Harvard. Sam only knows Tompkins by name. He asks most of the questions, and seems to have the most openly hostile attitude of any of them, though they all look at Sam with varying levels of distaste. All except the one on the far left, whose sandstone brown skin is spotted with age, but whose brown eyes are still bright and intelligent. He sometimes looks at Sam with something like softness in his face, sometimes offers him a small, careful smile. Everything about him stands in contrast to Tompkins, whose beard is immaculately trimmed, hair carefully slicked back and hands held with a studied air of grace.

“Now, where did we leave off?” Tompkins leans his elbows on the table, hands steepled against his chin. “Ah yes, you had just killed Lilith with your demonic powers, thus destroying the final seal and unleashing Lucifer upon the world. Is that correct?”

Sam grits his teeth against the wave of anger and shame that sweeps through him. He breathes in deeply through his mouth. This is the best thing he can do now. The closest he can come to earning some kind of absolution, if only from himself, is to tell the truth. Maybe, if he does, everything that he and Dean have done, everything they’ve learned at great cost, can help save someone else, help keep them from making the same mistakes. Sam exhales through his nose and locks eyes with Tompkins, ready to begin.

…

Sam’s jaw is aching from clenching his teeth when Mary Jane and her companion retrieve him from the council room. Long hours in the tedious and draining confirmation of the events in Chuck’s books have left Sam exhausted and irritable. They keep calling Chuck ‘the Prophet,’ and Sam has no intention of enlightening them to his true nature.

Talking about that time in his life is hard enough, but trying to keep calm, to keep from reacting to Tompkins’ smug superiority leaves Sam feeling stretched thin. They made it far today, all the way to the family trip back in time. Talking about John and Mary like that, talking about Dean with these people. It’s galling. But worse, it reminds Sam that he’s it. The last Winchester standing. There is a deep black pit waiting just beyond that thought and Sam is trying so hard not to fall into it.

As they pass into the corridor leading to the cell block, Sam nearly runs into a man carrying a short wooden ladder. Sam turns to watch the man pass by. He’s being led by Cuthbert 2.0, who gives Sam a disdainful once over and continues on his way.

When Sam gets back to his cell he checks it from top to bottom, looking for any change, but he can find nothing and he’s too tired to worry about it beyond that. So he lays down on his cot and buries his face in the pillow.

…

Sam cannot sleep. The lights snapped off hours ago, full artificial day to full artificial night with no warning and no transition. He sits on his cot, back to the wall, long legs stretched out before him. His mind is filled with a gray fog that rolls and ebbs, fills him up and leaves his body numb and useless.

He cannot get out from under the boulder of grief crushing his chest. Each breath measured in Dean's name. Breathe in, Dean is dead. Breathe out, Dean is gone. Breathe in, Dean is dead. Breathe out, Dean is gone.

There's a churning in Sam's gut that builds back and back upon itself, an insatiable urgency. Desperate to move, to get away, even as he feels pinned in place by his loss. It grows and grows until it bubbles up from his roiling stomach, clogs his throat until he is choking back the broken sob that tries to claw free of his mouth. He clenches his teeth against the mounting urge to scream.

A sucking pop breaks the silence and in the space of a breath, the pressure isn't just inside Sam anymore, it's out there. Outside his cell, bulging against the bars.

Sam's heart races with a kick of adrenaline that has his eyes hopelessly trying to focus in a blackness so complete there is no gradation. Even the faint, blinking red light on the security camera is snuffed out.

Shivers chase themselves down Sam's spine. He stares out toward it, strains his ears for any noise, but there is nothing. Whatever is out there is powerful, so powerful that without sight or sound it can change the landscape of the room from one of quiet emptiness to one full and bristling with focused intent.

For long minutes nothing happens. Sam feels like a bug in an entomologist’s kill jar, waiting for the acetone fumes to suffocate him, waiting to become part of some collection of pretty dead things.

The tension shifts, reforms, settles. The presence isn't taking up as much space anymore. It's not crowding in against the bars. It is instead condensed down into something more comprehensible. Sam can feel the acuteness of its attention still, but it is no longer so overwhelming. It moves forward then, still outside the cell, with a soft susurration of sound like silk on stone, or falling sand. A snake sliding its unhinged jaw over the body of its prey.

Sam stands, takes his cheek between his teeth, ready to bite and bleed and paint sigils if he has to. He may be in a cell, but there is a difference between being restrained and being caged.

He will not be caged. Not like with Lucifer when he was desperate and alone and every moment was a new agony for years unmeasurable. Even if he dies here, he will not be made to feel caged again. Not ever.

The thought burns fierce through Sam, and as if it can sense his determination, his visitor moves back and takes its oppressive presence with it. Its attention slides away, and like a sigh begins to dissipate. And in this openly hostile world Sam has found himself in, its retreat is almost an act of kindness.

"Wait," Sam calls, heart hammering in his chest. "What do you want? Who are you?"

There is no reply, just the sense of eyes passing over him and away before the presence is gone.

Sam isn't sure what possessed him to call out to it other than a desire to understand. If it can read him, if it chooses not to press its advantage, so far above him in power, then maybe it isn’t malevolent. Maybe it could help him. Or more likely, he reminds himself, this is some new interrogation tactic. He curses himself for stupid then climbs back into bed, his body slammed with a sudden and boundless exhaustion.

The adrenaline comedown leaves him shaky and cold, and it is a long time before he drifts off to sleep, memories of Dean's voice calling him into frantic and restless dreams.  
…

The next morning Mary Jane is not alone. The man with the slicked back hair, Cuthbert 2.0, stomps in behind her. His brooding impatience from yesterday is still present in every line of his body, his upper lip already curled in the suggestion of a sneer.

"What did you do?"

"You’ll have to be more specific. It was a very eventful night.” Sam looks around his bare cell slowly and raises an eyebrow, a sarcastic tilt to his mouth.

“Oh I bet it was. Tell me how you did it.”

“Did what?”

“The camera,” he says, enunciating slowly as if Sam is an idiot. “It can’t be a spell. Not with these bars. I reinforced the spell-work last month. God himself couldn’t pluck you from this cell. So it must be an object, something you can thrust between the bars and activate.”

He holds out his hand and wiggles fingers in the manner of a toddler demanding a treat. “Let’s have it.”

Sam rolls his eyes. “Did it occur to you that the camera is just malfunctioning?” Sam remembers the man with the ladder walking down the corridor last night. They must have already checked the camera.

“Oh it’s in perfect working order. And I have twenty minutes of blank footage to prove it. You’ve done something to blind the camera and I want to know what it was.”

Sam stands up a little straighter, mind racing. He remembers the red light shutting off when his visitor came. Maybe it didn’t turn off at all, maybe something was blocking it. The presence had felt huge and oppressive. Could it have spanned the whole corridor? What about when it seemed to condense to one focal point? And if it's causing problems for the Men of Letters, perhaps it is something different altogether.

“I don’t know what it was,” Sam says, and it’s the truth.

“Well then, it’s a simple matter. I’ll simply withhold food until you cooperate," he says, grabbing for the tray in Mary Jane's hand.

Mary Jane snatches it away, holds it protectively to her chest. “Y-you can’t do that, it’s against regulations. I don’t... I don’t want to have to report you, Lucas."

"Surely you must be joking,” Lucas says, tilting his head back to look down his nose at Mary Jane, who does her best to hold eye contact. “I see. I’ll leave you to your charge, for now. But remember, there’s a time for following the rules and there is a time for rewriting them," Lucas says and turns on his heel. “And we’re fast approaching the latter.” He leaves the hall with the same barely suppressed energy he entered with.

"He's a barrel of laughs," Sam says and takes the tray that Mary Jane slides onto the shelf. He smiles at her, a small one this time, sincere.

She's staring after Lucas, biting at her lip.

"Thanks. For this." Sam lifts his bowl of oatmeal in a salute from his perch on the end of the cot.

She turns to look at him for a long moment, before shaking her head as if waking up. An anxious blush spreads across her cheeks. She nods once and scurries down the hall in an embarrassed rush.

…

Sam is just as curious as Lucas about what happened last night. Whatever is visiting him is powerful, but Sam decides to operate on the theory that the wards in this chapter house are too strong for something to cross univited. That means the presence, whatever it is, might already be inside the bunker.

When they take Sam through the great hall to the council chambers, he focuses his attention on scanning the shelves and display cases for any relics that might house something as powerful as his visitor. There are a few vases and urns with intricate runes, but nothing that seems unusual. That is until Sam’s eyes catch on the display case directly across the mezzanine from him. He must have missed it before because it’s part of an arrangement of seven blades, from swords to daggers, arrayed by size. The second from the bottom is a demon killing knife, nearly identical to Ruby’s, the one now languishing unused in the Impala’s trunk.

Hot anger flushes through Sam. Another knife like that one could have saved a lot of lives. It could have changed things for him and Dean. Hell, half of Ruby’s original appeal had been the knife. It had made her seem so powerful, so special, as if she had a world of knowledge and resources that Sam couldn’t get anywhere else.

He goes into the council chambers already angry, teeth already clenched. He answers their questions in short, clipped tones, but he answers. Even when they ask about heaven. When they ask about the amulet, Sam lies to them for the first time, says he left it in the trash can of that no-name motel.

Tompkins' questions are pointed today, they have a manic air to them, something frenetic. He glosses over whole weeks of time, what would be whole books in Chuck’s series. He doesn’t ask about Leah, or Gabriel, he doesn’t even make a dig about Brady’s personal connection to Sam. The other council members shoot him looks from time to time, but no one stops him. Sam’s beginning to think them incapable of speech, if not independent thought.

Sam understands Tompkins’ haste when he thunks another of Chuck’s books on the table. He knows that cover, the Impala parked next to a hole in the ground, and he knows what Tompkins is going to ask about. His stomach plummets toward his feet.

“Tell me about Lucifer,” Tompkins says.

“Well,” Sam says through the thickness in his throat, “he was God’s favorite archangel.”

“I should have known this would be a joke to you.”

Sam breathes deliberately through his nose, struggling to keep his calm.

“Let me make this simple for you. I want to know why you thought attempting to overpower Lucifer was a good plan,” Tompkins asks. He taps the book against the table. “What made you think you could? You’d fallen for every trap set for you. What made you think you had the right to risk the world on your ability to withstand Lucifer?”

Sam grits his teeth so hard that the muscle in his jaw jumps. He doesn’t want to justify himself to them anymore. He doesn’t want to explain how hopeless it was, how alone and powerless they felt. “What does it matter? I did it.”

Tompkins leaps to his feet, his chair screeching backward. He slams the book down on the table, “According to this, you very nearly didn’t. Your arrogance nearly handed Lucifer his victory.”

Sam’s whole body flushes hot with humiliated anger. Letting Lucifer in, jumping into the cage was the most terrifying thing Sam has ever done. To hear it talked about like it was a flippant choice, carelessly made, like it wasn’t a horrifically desperate play, is infuriating.

“We’re done here.” Sam says through clenched teeth.

“Excuse me?”

“I said, we’re done here.”

“You will answer my questions,” Tompkins snarls.

No, he won’t. Sam tilts his head, jaw ticking, and stares Tompkins down. The council members' faces are hard and uncompromising, all except the one on the end, the only one who has ever looked at Sam with something other than disdain.

Sam fixes his eyes on him, lets him see everything. He’s done answering their questions. It’s clear that this isn’t what he thought. Answering their questions isn’t going to help anyone. No lessons will be learned, no knowledge shared to help others make better choices than Sam has. His story is nothing to them but a weapon to bludgeon him with, and he’s done telling it. He’s made up his mind. He’s spent centuries as the devil’s favorite chew toy, they won’t bend him.

The man returns Sam’s stare for a long moment, then stands and presses a button on the edge of the table. “I believe that’s enough.”

“Malcolm,” Tompkins says, warning in his voice.

“Relax, Tompkins, no one is challenging your right to lead these sessions. But the boy is clearly done for the day. We can pick this up later, perhaps from another angle,” Malcolm says, raising a pointed eyebrow.

Tompkins turns to Sam. “Putting your own frustration above the common good. Yet another example of Winchester arrogance.”

“Arrogance?” Sam snaps, rising to his feet. From the corner of his eye he sees the doors swing open, Mary Jane standing there waiting to take Sam away, but he can’t bring himself to stop. Anger like a runaway train races through his body, trembles in his voice.

“Arrogance is a demon-killing blade on your wall, gathering dust while you rail about failing to stop the apocalypse. How long did it take you to figure out that the seals were being broken? How long before you knew what that meant? How many seals could that knife have saved? All that knowledge, all these tools, and you do nothing. While we’re out there sacrificing and bleeding and making mistakes because we don’t have all the information, you sit here in your embroidered robes and pat yourselves on the back for being so much smarter than some dumb hunters,” Sam says, heart pounding in his chest. “That’s arrogance.”

“Get him out of here,” Tompkins commands, and Mary Jane scrambles into the room to retrieve Sam.

As she walks him back through the great hall, Sam can’t keep his eyes from drifting to the knife where it sits in its carefully lit exhibit.

“Do you know what that is?” he asks Mary Jane.

She leans around him following his eyes. “The Kurdish knife? It’s the demon-killing blade you were talking about.”

“So you know what it can do, what a difference it could make.”

Mary Jane doesn’t answer. She presses Sam forward, gets him moving again.

He knew the second he arrived here that they never intended to let him go, but this is different. This isn’t prison. It’s the underground vault of a private collector. All of Sam’s knowledge is going to be extracted and recorded, and filed on a shelf somewhere. Sam himself will be hoarded until they either kill him or he withers away.

“That’s what they’re going to do to me,” he says.

…

The florescent lights click off, their buzzing hum cuts out and the room snaps into abrupt silence. Sam props his pillow against the wall and stretches his legs out on the bed. He fixes his eyes on the blinking red light of the surveillance camera and waits to see if his visitor will return.

He doesn’t wait long. It starts in his ears, a tightness like changing altitude muffling his hearing. He swallows and his ears pop. There is that rush of sound, wind through wheat fields, and the camera’s light blinks out and does not come back. It’s there, outside the bars. It slips straight into its condensed form, no longer nebulous and too large for the room. Instead of pushing towards him, it exerts a force like gravity. A black hole to draw him in.

Sam slides his legs off the covers and stands, the sound of his bare feet hitting the concrete as loud as a shotgun blast in the quiet dark.

“Hello?” Sam says. He licks his lips, swallows the lump in his throat. “I’m Sam.” He stares into the fathomless black and feels it stare back. Long minutes tick by as it observes him. He tracks its gaze by the goosebumps that pebble his skin. Down his arm to his wrist, lingering on the back of his hand. He is gathering his courage to speak again when a shockingly human sigh startles him into silence.

“I know,” she answers, her voice the voices of dozens of women all woven together, layered and strange. Sam can pick out a handful of individuals, a high falsetto, a low rasp, a child’s voice, a gnarled old woman, and something rich and tonal, but there are too many to count and they blur together in a bewildering hum. Its complex harmony vibrates through Sam, resonates with something in the center of him.

Sam is drawn forward a staggering step that he never meant to take. A warm thread thrumming in his gut that makes him think _Dean_ for one startled, disorienting second, until the awful reality asserts itself. Dean is dead. Dean is gone to the empty.

Just like that, Sam’s focus is shattered in a dizzy wave of horror that turns his stomach. Cold sweat breaks out across his neck and saliva floods his mouth, his breath gone reedy and shallow.

She takes a step closer to the bars, attention locked on his face, but Sam can hardly spare her a thought through the haze of his grief. He tries to regulate his breathing but thoughts of Dean fill each inhale, stopper each exhale and leave him panting, rapid fire. Breathe in, Dean is dead. Breath out, Dean is gone. Dean is dead. Dean is gone. Dead, and gone, gone, gone. Until his head swims with it.

“Sam,” she says, command in the many strata of her voice.

Sam sucks in a deep, gasping breath. It fills his lungs, presses out against his ribs. He takes another and another. The rising tide of panic starts to recede.

“It’s ok. I’m ok,” Sam says, surprised to find himself on the ground, hunched over his folded legs. His knees ache where he must have fallen on them.

She watches him while he catches his breath, silent and patient.

“Perhaps he was right. You may be another,” she says and vanishes.

"What the hell does that mean?" Sam asks the empty room. He crawls back to his bed, sore knees dragging against the rough concrete. He heaves himself onto the cot and turns over her words for another restless night.

…

No one comes to take his tray after breakfast and no one comes to escort him to the council rooms.

Toni comes in around lunch. She strolls past the first two cells in the block and stops across from Sam's, leaning against the wall. She folds her arms across her chest and watches him. Her eyes track up and down his body, evaluating his condition and then she stands there, just watching.

Sam watches her back. Her feet are crossed at the ankle. There's a splatter of something vaguely orange across the toe of her left boot. It’s incongruous. She doesn’t seem the type to leave the house with a single hair out of place. He wonders if she might have a kid at home, but she seems so cold that it’s hard to imagine.

Toni stays until someone brings in Sam's lunch. For the first time it’s not Mary Jane. She’s a mousy woman who dresses like a librarian in a child's storybook, glasses chain and all. The librarian leaves with Sam's breakfast tray, her dark hair swaying behind her. Toni pushes off the wall and moves toward the door.

“You're not quite what I thought,” she says as she passes Sam. He's not sure if that's a good or a bad thing.

…

Hours later the cell block door creaks open and the red light of the security camera clicks off. Sam’s gut twists. The lights are still on and it’s too early for his visitor. This can’t be anything good. He strains his ears and can just make out the sound of someone creeping down the hall. Sam slides silently to his feet and pads over to the opposite corner of his cell, back pressed to the side wall. He’s trying to present the smallest target that he can and make sure whoever is coming has to walk into full view of the cell before they can get a good look at him.

He doesn’t know what he's expecting, but it certainly isn’t to see Mary Jane sheepishly shuffling into view. She has a dark green, leather bound journal tucked under her arm. She blinks in surprise when she sees how Sam is poised for action.

“Um, hi?” She says, looking confused.

And now Sam feels ridiculous. “Hey,” He says and joins her at the front of the cell. “What are you doing here, and how’d you manage that?” Sam asks, nodding his head at the shutdown surveillance camera.

“Oh that? It’s on the fritz you know.” She blinks owlishly up at Sam, face a picture perfect impression of wide-eyed innocence. Sam can’t help the startled laugh that leaps out of him. She smiles back, blushes prettily. “Actually, William turned it off. I’ve only got a couple minutes.” Sam files that name away, assuming it's the man who helps Mary Jane escort him to the council chambers. He's the only one she seems to be friendly with.

“Okay, so what’s up?”

“I just wanted to check in.”

Sam is surprised at such an overt display of concern. It makes him uneasy.

“Toni’s in charge of your case right now and she can be, well, she can be a little unpredictable.” Mary Jane’s lips pucker like she tasted something sour. “She didn’t say anything, did she, while the cell door was open?”

“No. Why?” Sam doesn’t like where this conversation is going. He doesn’t like the way that Mary Jane is shifting her weight from foot to foot or suddenly fine with breaking the rules.

“It’s nothing.”

“Mary Jane, you came here for a reason. Please, tell me what it is.”

“It’s just, she’s very good with spell-work.” Mary Jane chews at her lower lip for a moment, avoiding looking at Sam’s face. When she finally looks up, there’s a sharpness in her eyes that reminds Sam of Jo, even her voice is more firm when she says, "Be careful, Sam. If something doesn’t feel right around her, it probably isn’t. You can’t trust her.” The hairs on Sam’s arms stand on end.

“What kind of spell-work are we talking about?”

Something beeps from Mary Jane’s pocket, and her eyes go wide and innocent again. “I’m sorry, I have to go,” she says, and scurries down the hall before Sam can demand an answer. The camera blinks back on just as the cell block door clicks closed.

Sam stands there for awhile, wondering just what he’s gotten himself into.

...

Sam wakes to a feeling of building pressure in his ears, eyes sliding open to the unwavering dark. He stays still and strains his ears with listening, but all he hears is the leaky faucet. He tries to prepare himself for the panic of last night to return, but the pressure subsides before peaking, and though he does feel watched, there is nothing predatory in it this time.

“Are you afraid, Sam?” she says, her many voices humming through the air. She must be outside his cell, on the side where Sam's cot is. Maybe ten feet away but for the bars.

“Should I be?” Sam says into the black void.

“I don't know.” She answers, a strange hesitance to the symphonic sound of her voice. Sam is inclined to believe that she really doesn't know.

"Ok," Sam says. "I don't know either, so I guess we have some common ground. That's not a bad start. Why are you here?"

"To learn."

"Learn, what?" Sam asks.

"I don't know."

"Didn't they tell you?"

"They?"

“The Men of Letters,” Sam says.

The layered sound of her laughter crashes through the cell block like waves against the shore. "What, these old hypocrites who hide underground and pass judgment on everything else? They have nothing to say to me."

"So you're not a Man of Letters?"

"No."

Sam leans forward, knees on his elbows. "And they didn't send you?"

"No."

"Then how did you get here? If you’re not a Man of Letters, then what are you?"

"What am I?" she says, the tones of her voice evening out and settling into something low and tired. “I'm... something else.” There is a disappointed edge in her tone and Sam realizes that implying she is a ‘what’ may be a misstep.

"I'm sorry," Sam says and slides to his feet, spreads his arms. "I should have asked, who are you? Is there something I can call you? A name?"

She huffs, and her voice becomes rich and harmonic again. "You ask a lot of questions, Sam."

"Yeah, um, that's kinda my thing. Drove my brother crazy, too."

The air moves as she walks closer to the bars, her eyes weigh on Sam, watching him through the blackness. "You miss him." A deep curiosity sweeps through her voices.

"Yes." Sam says, voice tight. Honesty here may be a mistake. She could still be playing Sam, part of some elaborate ruse. He might be giving the Men of Letters more ammunition to throw at him later, but if they don’t already know how he feels about Dean being gone then Sam is vastly overrating their skills.

She is quiet for a time. He can sense movement but cannot translate it into anything meaningful. He imagines her tilting her head and examining him from a new angle, birdlike, until she finally breaks the silence.

"Why are you here, Sam?"

Sam can't hold back his small, bitter laugh. He's not even sure how to start answering that. He's here because he let out the Darkness, because of the Mark of Cain, because of Gadreel, and the Trials. Hell and Lucifer. Ruby and demon blood. Cold Oak and muddy knees and a knife in the back. Demon deal upon demon deal and on and on. Their whole life a sorry mix of loss and revenge, sacrifice and pain. Manipulation upon manipulation. Because a Winchester, a Campbell, never knows when to let go.

Sam has traced and retraced the heritage of his and Dean's fate and he has yet to figure out how far back he would have to go to stop their trajectory. It's a useless exercise anyway, because Heaven and Hell wanted Dean and Sam to be born, wanted Dean in hell and Sam juiced on demon blood. The apocalypse or the cage. That was always going to happen. Sam has gotten what he deserves, but not Dean. Dean deserved so much better. Maybe if he had looked for Dean when he was in Purgatory, maybe if he had finished the trials, maybe they could have avoided the horrid grind of the last three years. Maybe Dean wouldn't be dead and gone. Erased.

But ultimately, Sam is here in this cell, being toyed with by a smug intellectual elite because he finally let Dean go. Because he is alone and Dean is dead. Because Sam let him go.

"I never knew when to let go and when to hold on," Sam says. "I could never get it right. That's why I'm here." It feels as true as anything else.

His visitor leaves him them, dissipating quietly from the room.

…

Toni and another woman, black cloth hugging her strong frame and her red hair pulled back in a tight bun, come to Sam’s cell just after the lights click on. When they walk out to the mezzanine, a rush of raised voices draw’s Sam’s attention down to the first floor. Lucas has Tompkins cornered against the map table, arguing. His eyes have a manic glow as he gesticulates wildly.

“It’s tonight. I've worked out the timing to the exact minute. It would be child's play to rig a trap, kill the beast – or better yet catch it – and have one of London's most powerful men in our debt. Think of what it could mean for this organization.”

“I fear I am the only one who is. This is not what we do, Lucas, and you are well aware of that. Catch the creature? My god, and then what?”

“Study it! We do it all the time with other creatures. We have cells that will hold it. Imagine what we could learn.”

Sam shortens his stride, curious to stay in the great hall a little longer.

“It's too dangerous. There are too many variables. And what's more, it is not our way. We do not intervene. The man made his choice and now his bill has come due and he must pay the price. Currying favors with rich men is the work of corrupt politicians, not Men of Letters.”

“We intervene all the time, study specimens all the time. How is this different?”

“Enough Lucas. The matter is closed. We will not discuss it again.”

The woman escorting Toni, shoves Sam in the back, propels him down the hallway to the council chambers and Sam hears no more. It isn’t until they direct him past the intricately carved doors to the council chambers, Sam’s eyes catching on the point of Lucifer’s blade aimed at Michael’s heart, that Sam understands that he’s in trouble.

They enter the next room, a plain metal door leading to a bare concrete room with a drain in the middle of the floor. Chains hang from the ceiling, shackles bolted to the floor beneath them. Sam rears back against the woman holding him, drops an elbow to her gut and nearly breaks her grip, but something pricks his neck, and the world swims out of focus.

Pain sizzles along Sam’s nerves, shocking him awake. His muscles contract painfully and he gasps in a breath as he opens his eyes to see the woman in black holding a cattle prod inches from his side. He’s shirtless, arms suspended above his head, bare feet shackled to the floor.

“You shouldn’t have been so quick to wear out the council’s patience, Sam. Now it’s my questions you’ll be answering,” Toni says from where she’s perched on a wooden chair, notebook in hand. “This doesn’t have to be a painful experience. Simply answer my questions, and you’ll be returned to your cell unharmed.”

Sam laughs. He’s been tortured enough to recognize someone who enjoys it.

Toni glares and leans forward in her seat. “You should have been dealt with the moment you discovered the American bunker. There are powerful relics stored there, relics that do not belong in the blundering care of hunters like you. And if the rumors are to be believed, if you did release the Darkness, then you must have access to incredibly powerful magic. Magic only found in the Book of the Damned. Tell me where it is and how you retrieved the Codex.”

"I’ve got nothing to say to you."

“We’re building a new world, Sam, and men like you have no place in it. Imagine how little I care about what condition you leave this room in. You only have two choices, tell me what I want to know or Ms. Watts will do what is necessary to motivate you.”

“I’ve been tortured by the Devil himself. What can you do to me?” Sam doesn’t bother to keep the derision from his voice.

“A few things, I imagine,” Toni says.

Ms. Watts steps into view holding a leather strap, wider and more flexible than a belt and adorned with wicked looking pyramid studs. She snaps it in her hand.

“Where is the Book of the Damned?” Toni asks.

“Screw you,” Sam says.

The strap whistles through the air, it cracks into his side, lashing around his front. Sam grunts with the impact, pain lancing through his chest. She beats him until he sags in the chains, pausing only for Toni’s questions that Sam never answers. They alternate between the strap and the cattle prod and Sam loses long stretches of time to the pain. Screams tear themselves from his throat, but he doesn’t fight it. He learned long ago that being stoic doesn’t change anything.

“Just answer the questions, Sam, and you can stop all this. Don’t make us hurt you.”

Sam chokes out a broken laugh, swaying in his chains. “Why do people always say that? Don’t pretend you don’t have a choice. You’ve made yours and I’ve made mine, so just get on with it.”

Toni snaps her notebook closed, gritting her teeth. “I believe it’s time for the next phase, Ms. Watts.”

Sam almost regrets mouthing off when he sees the blowtorch. The sense memory of fire burns through his skin, the smell of his own burning flesh fills his nose as memories of the cage crowd to the surface. He pushes them stubbornly back.

“I guess we’re really doing this.” Ms. Watts says, and lights the torch. She kneels by Sam’s immobilized feet bringing the torch toward the side of his foot. Sam shrinks away, curling his toes in, but there’s nothing he can do. She takes her time, holds the torch far enough away that Sam’s skin turns vivid red and starts to blister, white hot pain thrumming up his leg.

The door crashes open in a sudden burst of noise that has Ms. Watts springing back and Sam sighing in relief. Mary Jane is there and she has Malcolm at her side.

“What’s going on here?” Malcolm asks, face tight with displeasure.

“I have full authorization to use extraordinary measures,” Toni says, crossing her arms over her chest.

“We’ll see about that. Release Mr. Winchester at once and come with me. I’m calling the council to session.” Malcolm is clearly angry, face flushed and fists clenched, but he’s also uncomfortable. He can’t seem to look at Sam. He doesn’t leave, though, despite his discomfort. He stays until Sam is unshackled and Toni and Ms. Watts leave the room.

Sam is drained from pushing back the hell memories, resisting the urge to fall apart. He’s got nothing left. He slips into an exhausted haze, stands docile as Mary Jane helps him into his shirt.

She places a gentle hand on his elbow and leads him back to his cell. Every step sends pain jarring up his leg and his mind is drifting to that place he discovered in the cage where everything is distant and surreal. Lucifer would come to him then, after decades of ceaseless torture, wearing the face of someone Sam loved. A false offer of comfort. Dean, Jess, Mom. He stares at Mary Jane’s blonde waves as she unlocks the cell door and follows Sam inside.

Sam slumps down on the cot, doesn’t even realize he’s going to speak until he does. “My mom’s name was Mary.”

Mary Jane freezes from where she’s bent over the cuffs, whispering the spell to unlock them.

“I know,” she says.

“You look a little like her.”

“I know.” Mary Jane sits back on her heels and tucks the cuffs in her pocket.

“Jess, too.”

“I know, I know,” she says, swiping a hand over her mouth. “I can’t do this,” she mutters and springs to her feet, racing from the cell. She barely pauses long enough to recite the locking spell before she disappears down the hall.

…

Sam keeps vigil, deep into the night, wondering where his visitor is, if she is coming back. Minutes tick by in a haze of pain and the fuzzed out blur of the blinking red light until they spin into hours and dawn is fast approaching. Sam is on the edge of passing another sleepless night and being weaker for it, making himself more vulnerable to the Men of Letter’s tender ministrations. He is nothing but a rough edge to them, a splinter waiting to happen and they are slowly sanding him down.

Sam is finally drifting to sleep, the throbbing ache of his body starting to slip away, when she comes. Her entrance is familiar, a strange sort of comfort. The vortex of air and pressure. The red light of the camera winking out.

He stays where he is, curled on his side, an arm wrapped protectively around his ribs.

"I didn't think you were coming."

“Neither did I,” she says. She walks closer to the bars than she has approached yet, in this form. That soft hush of noise still follows her movements. This time Sam imagines fabric, something smooth and light, brushing over the pressed concrete of the cell block floor. “They hurt you,” she says, thunder rumbling in her words.

The weight of her focus presses into him, lingers over the careful curve of his body. There is something different about it tonight. It pulses into him, an energy behind it that only feeds the draw he feels to her. He needs to get up, needs to meet her at the bars, let her see all of him. She would take all of him, he knows she would.

Sam grunts as he pushes himself to his feet, sways toward her. He staggers, struggles to keep his balance and steps hard on his burnt foot. Pain races up his leg and jars him out of her thrall.

“What's happening?” Sleep and pain slur his words. He feels half in a dream already. He just wants to rest. He wants to stop worrying if everything is a trap. Mostly, he wants his brother. But that isn’t possible.

“It wasn't my plan to come again. I didn’t want to be proven wrong by you.”

“I’ve disappointed you,” Sam says, and it shouldn’t matter, but it does. It does. He wants to leave some impression on this world that is not one of failure.

“Perhaps, but not in the way you think. I am forced to admit that he was right about you.”

“Who?” Sam asks.

“I have come to give you something,” she says, ignoring Sam’s question. Her voices turn deep, favoring the tones of the old and wise, grandmothers and warriors, healers and storytellers, “but for that you must come to me.”

And Sam wants to, so badly. That's what scares him. He has a history of wanting things he shouldn’t want. She could still be a plant, the balm sent to soothe Sam’s pain, someone Sam is meant to relate to, to trust, and to confide in. If she is, then it's working and Sam is running out of strength to fight with.

He is exhausted, the gears of his mind have been turning constantly for weeks. Sleep is elusive. Thoughts of Dean pulse through him every moment of every day, sometimes comforting, sometimes crippling. He doesn't know what to do here. He has learned to distrust power however it comes and there is no denying that this being is powerful. He has hardly any better reason to trust his own desires. His own heart has proven an unreliable navigator in the past.

He doesn't know what to do.

“You don't trust me. I don't blame you. But have I been an unkind visitor? Have I earned your distrust?”

“I don’t even know who you are. How can I trust you if I don’t know what you want?”

“You do not need to fear me; I know you can feel that. I see you now, Sam Winchester. You are like me, and I will never hurt you.” She flexes her power, it pushes against the edges of the room, hums through Sam's bones. “Come to me.”

Sam sighs out a breath and stops fighting the pull, but he can't keep his pulse from racing, fear and anticipation rousing his blood even through his exhaustion. He shuffles forward, hands outstretched before him. His fingers nudge the bars and he grabs on, pulls himself flush against them, his forehead pressing between them.

Even so close, Sam can see nothing but blackness. The room has fallen into thick silence, Sam’s heart ticking out the seconds in a stutter-beat, his ears ringing with the quiet.

A breath of air brushes against his hands where they grip the bars and Sam holds tighter, waits with held breath. Her fingers are gentle, cool and smooth as river stone when she touches two to his forehead. A sweet and numbing shadow slips over Sam's senses, dulls the edges of his pain. His heart rate slows and his breathing deepens. The biting edge of his fear dulls.

“What is this?” Sam slurs around the thick lassitude soaking into his body.

“Again with your many questions,” she says, her voices colored in tones of fondness. “It is a gift.”

Sam's mind feels warm and heavy, his pulse thrumming steady and soothing in his ears. The desire to sleep sweeps through him, followed immediately by the knowledge that he will, finally.

“Will you come again?” Sam sags into the bars, stays pressed to them with her hand resting against him.

“Do you want me to?” She asks, a child’s voice rising to the front of the complex harmony, something of wonder ringing out through it.

“If you can. If it's not too much. I don't,” Sam hesitates, licks his lips, he's too tired to feel real shame, but embarrassment flushes his cheeks, “– I don't want to be alone.” To die alone, is what he really thinks.

Her fingers run gently over his skin, brushing his hair back as best she can without crossing the barrier of the bars.

“I will come when I can,” she says, voices gone soft and sweet as the murmuring of a stream. “For now, you must go back to your bed while you still can. Sleep will come.”

“Thank you,” Sam says and pushes back from the bars. He hobbles back to his cot in a daze and sinks into sleep almost before his head hits the pillow.


	2. Chapter 2

Sam's sleep is deep and peaceful. He wakes once to drink water from the faucet and then crashes back into bed. He falls back asleep with ease and sinks into the first dream.

Sam finds himself inside the bunker, in the hallway between the kitchen and the Library. He can hear voices from the kitchen, Cas and a woman, maybe Jody, but the shine of orange light and the quiet sound of music beckons him into the library. An Aerosmith album is on the turntable by the door, the opening riff of “Dream On” drifting through the air.

Dean is hunched over one of the tables. Dad's journal sits at his left elbow, a familiar shape amongst a sea of maps and notebooks. One of Charlie's tracking programs is running on the laptop. Dean's face glows in the warm light from the lamp. His eyelashes cast feathery shadows across his freckled cheeks.

Sam doesn't remember this day. He can't quite place the woman's voice that he can dimly hear. The music and the squeak of the sharpie Dean is using to trace a route on the map in front of him are obscuring it. It isn’t Jody though he swears it is familiar. It could be Lisa. Perhaps he is dreaming up a world where Dean can have everything he wants. Sam would bear witness to that world every night, if he could.

The familiar sight of late night research, of Dean tracking down a lead, settles something in Sam and the tension runs out of Sam's muscles. The frantic pulse of missing Dean evens out to something bearable. It's hard to miss his brother when he's right here in front of him, living the life he loved, even if it’s only in Sam’s dreams.

Dean freezes with his hand poised over the map, lifts his head to look directly at Sam as if he could sense him in the room. A dawning look of wonder breaks across his face.

“Sammy,” he mouths, making no sound.

Sam's chest clenches, a slow smile spreading across his face.

“You came home,” Dean says, voice soft as silk, “You're here.” He jumps up from his seat and rushes to stand in front of Sam. His hand reaches out to cup Sam's elbow but stops an inch away, hovering in Sam's space but not touching.

And God, Sam wants to lean into him. He wants to go home to the bunker and find Dean there, but that's not possible anymore. This is the closest Sam can get.

“I wish. Wouldn't be the same without you, anyway.”

“What's that supposed to mean? I've been going crazy looking for you, man. Cas has been on a rampage. How'd you get away?”

Sam smiles. Dean is so earnest, so focused and it feels so good to be the center of his attention again. “Let's sit down,” he says, guides Dean back to the table and pushes him into his chair. Sam takes the chair beside him, turns it so they're facing each other, knees bumping. Sam lets himself look, takes in Dean's rumpled flannel, the shadows that linger under his eyes.

“There's so much I've got to tell you. You won't even believe half of it.” Dean's babbling a little, like he does when he's overtired but happy. He's smiling down at where their knees are pressed together. “There's someone you gotta meet.” He looks up and his voice falters when he catches Sam's eyes. There must be something in Sam’s expression because Dean stops, face going blank. “This is a dream, isn't it.”

Sam nods. “At least it's a good one.”

“Right, just a dream,” Dean says. He’s staring at Sam with an intensity that pulls Sam in, his body tipping forward until he’s leaning in towards Dean.

Dean’s hand cups the back of Sam’s neck and draws Sam in even closer, until their heads are bent together, foreheads touching.

“Just a dream,” Dean says again and licks his lips. They’re close, so close. The smell of Dean’s skin alive in the air between them. Sam could live here forever in this liminal space between what they were and what they could have been. The shock of Dean’s warm breath on Sam’s lips, tugs at the pulse of Sam’s blood, makes him gasp.

Dean jerks back, breaking contact with Sam. His eyes are wide and shocked. He shakes his head like he’s trying to wake himself up and scrubs a hand back and forth over his mouth, forehead creasing in thought. The music swells while Dean looks at him, eyes a bright and shining green. _Dream on_ , a young Steven Tyler advises in the background.

“Dammit, Sammy, where the hell are you.”

 _Right here_ , Sam wants to say back, but he jolts from his dream to the distant sound of screams.

… 

The door to the cell block clatters open and closed again with such force that Sam's cot shakes. Sam jumps to his feet and presses his face against the bars, angling to catch a glimpse of the hallway.  
  
William and Mary Jane are there. William's hands are on his head and he's gasping in heaving breaths, panting out, “Oh no, Oh God,” on every exhale. Someone is screaming out in the great hall.  
  
“Fuck!” Mary Jane shouts.  
  
“We're buggered.” William groans.  
  
“Maybe not,” Mary Jane says and marches down the block towards Sam.  
  
“What's going on?” Sam asks.  
  
“We're dying, that's what,” William says, running to catch up with Mary Jane.

She shoots him a withering look. Gone is the blushing girl of the last week and a half, shed like ill-fitting clothes. Sam understands with sudden clarity that this is who Mary Jane really is and she was indeed playing Sam from the beginning.

“Lucas brought a bloody Hellhound into the bunker,” Mary Jane says.  
  
“We don't know that,” William says, the bright light of denial in his wide eyes.  
  
“It's invisible, it's strong enough to smash through an iron railing, and it howls. I think it's a reasonable conclusion. Now shut up and let me think,” Mary Jane snaps. She pulls the key to Sam's cell from her pocket, a fierce look in her eyes. She's got mettle in her and now she reminds him even more of Mary, when she was young and still a hunter. 

The argument between Lucas and Tompkins makes perfect sense now. It looks like Lucas went ahead with his plan to capture and study a hellhound. Sam could have told him it would never work, but that doesn't matter now.  
  
“You're a hunter, you've faced hellhounds before,” Mary Jane says.  
  
“I have,” Sam says.  
  
“Ok, good. Help us, Sam.”  
  
“We're gonna need holy fire, your glasses, and that Kurdish demon knife,” Sam says by way of answer.  
…

They make their way out into the hallway, sticking to the shadows as best they can. The screaming has stopped, cut off abruptly. When they’re a few yards from the great hall, Sam hears the wet sound of rending flesh and the crunching of bones.

Sam waves William and Mary Jane back and approaches the great room with his back pressed tight against the wall. In front of the entry stairs, the iron railing has been smashed through, half a dozen supports ripped from the floor and all of it hanging down over one of the library tables. There’s a body lying on the table, it’s the dark haired woman who wears her eyeglasses on a chain. Her neck is bent at an odd angle and four gashes slash from her left shoulder to her right hip.

A disembodied arm, from the elbow down, lies on the map table, a puddle of blood spreading over the pacific ocean.

Sam can see the lower half of another body sticking out from underneath the map table. It’s stomach is gaping open and red chunks of flesh are being pulled from the wound and then vanishing as the hellhound swallows them. The body rocks every time the hellhound digs into it, leg twitching with missent nerve signals.

“Oh god,” Mary Jane whispers from where she’s come up beside Sam.

Sam pushes her back a few feet into the hallway.

“Where’s the holy oil?”

“It’s close. There’s a jug on the display between here and the main entrance.”

“Ok. You two go for that. Light a fire and pass your glasses through it. A mirror, a window, glasses, anything scorched by holy fire will let you see it. I’m going to make a run for the knife.” They all glance down the hall. The knife is on display directly across from them. Sam will have to run the whole length of the great hall to get it. “The hellhound is down on the ground floor, so stay up here. As far as I know, hellhounds can’t jump very high. Get the glasses to me if you can.”

“If we can’t?” William asks.

“Then you’re going to have to direct me. Let’s go.”

“This is insane,” William mutters, but he follows them to the end of the hall. Sam peeks around the corner. The hellhound is still eating the corpse under the map table, bones splintering with a snap in its powerful jaws.

He takes a deep breath, testing his ribs. They ache, but it shouldn't impede his breathing. His foot is a sharper pain, but he can push through it.

“Ready?”

Mary Jane and William nod and Sam takes off running. He’s halfway to the knife when he hears the hellhound growl. The sound of its feet thud toward him. A chair goes squealing across the ground and shatters as the hellhound crashes through it. Sam runs harder, feet pounding the floor. A table groans under the hellhound’s weight. It’s close now, no more than ten feet behind Sam, but still on the lower level.

Sam grabs the knife, and there’s a great heaving bang as the iron railing buckles in toward him. The hellhound plummets back onto the table, unable to make the jump. One of the table legs gives out, and the front end slams into the ground. The hellhound slides to the floor, claws leaving long gouges in the tabletop.

It growls low and angry and then goes quiet. Sam searches frantically for any sign of movement, but there’s nothing.

Across the mezzanine, William drops a match into a puddle of holy oil and a small flame roars to life.

“I lost it,” Sam shouts, “Hurry!”

“Almost done,” Mary Jane calls and takes off her glasses.

A footprint appears in the puddle of blood surrounding the body under the map table. The red shape of a paw appears a few feet away. It’s stalking quietly toward a toppled bookshelf leaning against one of the tables that Sam couldn’t see when he first surveyed the room. Sam’s stomach twists. It’s basically a makeshift ramp to the second story and it’s pointing right at Mary Jane and William where they are crouched over the flame.

“Hey,” Sam shouts, “over here,” and launches himself over the railing and onto the half-collapsed table below. He slides down it and lands in a crouch at the base.

The book case shudders and the hellhound growls low in its throat. Sam can feel its eyes on him, can hear it’s panting breath. He has its attention now. Sam circles behind the table to his left, strains his ears for any sound.

There’s a thump and the table shudders. The lamp on top goes flying and Sam slashes blindly at the air in front of him. Rank breath washes across his face. Sam ducks to the side. The snap of jaws rings in his ears.

He dives behind the next table, and scrambles to his feet.

“On the left. It’s circling the table. Get over here Sam!” Mary Jane waves frantically, leaning over the railing.

Sam spins on his heel. He sprints toward her, jumps on the nearest table and leaps for the railing. He grabs hold with one hand and hangs there.

“Legs!” William shouts, looking through a piece of shattered glass. Sam draws his legs up to his chest, dangling one handed from the railing. Claws catch the left leg of his pants and cut into his calf. The hellhound crashes down onto the table below.

Mary Jane reaches over the railing and slips the glasses onto Sam’s face. The world is shrouded in a blue fog. The shadowy form of the hellhound is a few yards away, readying for a running leap. Sam drops to the ground, just as it springs forward, jumping onto the table. It tries to backpedal when Sam drops down next to the table, but it’s going too fast, can’t stop its momentum.

It slides across the slick tabletop and Sam jabs forward with the knife. It catches it full in the neck, sinks to the hilt, black blood dripping around the blade where it’s lodged deep. The beast roars and jerks away. The blade slips out of Sam’s hands.

It has the high ground now, and Sam is weaponless. He dodges the swipe of a paw aimed at his head, and feints forward, then ducks left, grabbing for the knife. He misses. The hellhound swings its massive head to the side, smacking into Sam. Sam backpedals, right into the puddle of blood leaking across the floor. He falls hard, his face smashes against the edge of the table, cracking one lens of his glasses.

The hellhound is barking and snarling now. Saliva dripping from its jaws as it leans over the table, staring down at Sam.

The crack of a gun rings out as someone empties an entire clip into the beast’s back. It howls its outrage and turns its head, ready to counterattack, and the hilt of the knife stands out in sharp relief against its inky black skin.

Sam lunges forward, grabs the blade. He twists, pulls and rips the blade through the hellhound’s throat. Sprays of black, arterial blood hit Sam’s face and chest. The beast gurgles and twitches, paws once at it’s gaping throat and slumps down, dead. Its head hangs over the edge of the table, blood gushing into Sam’s lap.

Sam lies back on the floor and tries to catch his breath.

“Clear!” Toni shouts, and Sam looks up to see her, still holding her gun steady on the body of the hellhound. Mary Jane is beside her, holding up a piece of glass for Toni to look through. Sam struggles to his feet.

People start to trickle out of their hiding places in small groups. A few from one of the storage rooms, two from the hallway to the kitchen and archive storage, and several more emerge from the council room.

Shell-shocked, they take in the damage and eventually the whole great hall is full of people staring at Sam. Mary Jane and William make their way down the stairs, to stand beside him.  
  
A thick silence falls over the room, time measured in the hollow splat of black hellhound blood dripping from Sam's shirt. Sam takes off Mary Jane's glasses, wincing at the sight of the broken lens, and hands them back to her.  
  
“Sorry,” he says.

She scoffs and shakes her head. “Guess it’s back to contacts for me.”

“You two move away from him. Sam, drop the knife,” Toni says. She’s got her gun aimed at his chest, center mass. “We both know I will shoot you.”

“You’re empty,” Sam says, but he sets the knife on the table anyway.

  
The council is staring down at him, their faces twisted in distaste. Sam knows what they’re thinking. Smug in their dislike of dirty, brutal hunters when two of their own people lie dead on the floor. Anger and adrenaline swirl in Sam’s gut. He would rather look like a maniac covered in guts than sit on his high horse and claim superiority. And he must be a sight, blood dripping from his nose and covered neck to groin in hellhound ichor. He feels like like he went swimming in the stuff – like he _bathed_ in it. The idea sears through Sam like a bolt of lightning. The first trial. It shouldn't be possible, but what if. What if this is Sam’s way out.  
  
Sam bows his head, with closed eyes he thinks 'please' and chants, “ _Ka na am dar_.”

“What did you just do. Is that a spell?” Toni demands, but nothing else happens. No ache, no glow, no second chance. Just as Sam gives up, a sudden pain lances up his arm. He grunts through it, light shimmering underneath his skin, illuminating the tracery of his veins.  
  
“No,” Sam says when he catches his breath, “that was the first trial.”

  
“And that means?”  
  
Sam plants his feet, roots himself to the ground and rolls his shoulders back. He stands at his full height and lets his body remember its power. For the first time in a long time, Sam has the chance to make things right, and he’ll be damned if he lets a bunch of stuffed shirts stop him.  
  
“It means interrogation time is over.” Sam scans the room, locks eyes with anyone who will hold his gaze. “You want to do something worthwhile? Then stop wasting time asking me questions I'm not going to answer, and do something real.” He turns to Mary Jane and William. “Help me close the gates of hell, forever.”

…

William guides Sam back up the stairs and toward the hall leading to the cell block, not bothering with the cuffs. Sam briefly entertains the thought of making a run for the door, just one more flight above him. He can almost picture it. Bursting out into the cool evening air, praying to Cas the second he clears the warding. Freedom and a chance to complete the trials in his own way with what’s left of his family. But the fantasy fades as quickly as it comes. Cas is an ocean away, wings still clipped, and Sam is in a foreign country with no ID, no money, no contacts, and blood soaked clothes.

It might still be worth it, if only to let Cas know that this isn’t his fault. That Sam’s glad for every minute of his friendship, thankful for all his sacrifices, forgives him all his missteps. But to do that, to send that message, would sacrifice Sam’s credibility and tank any chance he has of completing the trials. Sam can’t risk it. The only way out is through.

As they pass into the hallway, Sam glances down to the ruined lower level. Mary Jane stands before the council, arms crossed across her chest and a stubborn tilt to her upturned chin. She seems so tiny surrounded by the council in their ornate robes, but Sam knows better. She stands uncowed, the spirit of defiance condensed down into the powerhouse of her small body.

“I made a call,” she says, “I’d make the same one again.”

Behind her, the bodies are already being removed from the hall. The man whose body was half hidden underneath the map table is being zipped into a body bag. It isn’t Lucas. Of course someone like him would survive the consequences of his own arrogance, but where is he?

William takes Sam back to the cell block. Walking into the cell is a trial of will, Sam’s whole body rebels against being confined again so soon. The post-hunt adrenaline crash is hovering on the edge of Sam’s awareness ready to slam down on him. His leg is starting to ache again where it’s still bleeding sluggishly.

“It’s just for now,” William says. “I’ll be back in a minute and we’ll see about getting you a proper shower and getting that leg tended to.”

“Ok.” Sam steps back and William closes the door as softly as he can, but the metallic clang still makes Sam jump. Sam presses his forehead to the bars and closes his eyes as he listens to the echo of William’s steps disappearing down the hall.

He should sit down or make an effort to take care of his leg, but exhaustion is trembling through his body and his mind is a wash of slippery thoughts. He stays there, leaning against the bars.

Last time he attempted the trials, the power swept through him and dissipated within a few minutes of the spell, but something is different this time. It’s under his skin and pulsing with the push and pull of his blood. It’s already changing him, washing him clean. But it’s a cleansing Sam won’t survive.

He’s dying. Ok. It’s worth it. It’s ok.

But, _God_ , what would Dean say?

  
…

“Alright, Sam. You can let go now.”

Sam blinks his eyes open to see Mary Jane’s shoes nudged up against the other side of the door, just inches from his own if not for the metal frame. Sam uncurls his fingers from the bars and steps back.

William flashes Sam a quick smile. His arms are piled high with a set of plush white towels and folded set of the gray shirt and pants set they’ve had him in. A pair of canvas shoes is perched atop the whole pile. Sam glances down his body. His shirt and lap are tar black with drying hellhound blood, and the outside of his left leg from the middle of his calf and down the side of his shoe is painted in the red of his blood. It’s not bad, Sam’s had worse, but it will need to be seen to, soon.

Mary Jane unlocks the door and steps into the cell. She’s holding a thick metal band. It’s about three inches wide and engraved with sigils, the edges inscribed in delicate spell-work in a small script that Sam does not recognize. He recognizes the shape, though. It’s a shackle, chainless but still imposing.

“You’ll need to wear this,” she says.

“Not our first choice, mate. But it’s the best we could do.” William says.

Sam nods, pushes up his right pant leg and Mary Jane kneels and slips the shackle around his ankle. She slides the bolt through the socket and whispers a spell. Sam watches as the bolt glows red hot and melts into the bracket of the shackle, sealing it shut.

When Mary Jane stands, William shoves the pile of clothes and towels into her arms.

“Let’s have a look at that leg, shall we,” he says. He examines the cuts on Sam’s calf and nods to himself. He grabs a towel and a squirt bottle of saline and flushes the wounds. When he’s done he pulls out a few butterfly bandages and presses the edge of the deepest gash together. Sam hisses in a breath, but holds himself still. “It’ll hold until you’re washed up. Let’s go.”

They lead Sam down to the showers. They have to pass through the great hall. There is no one in sight, but the muffled sound of angry voices carries from the council room. Whatever they’re doing in there – investigating what happened here or debating whether they will help Sam go forth with the trials – is getting heated. Down on the first level, the bodies have been removed, but the upturned book shelf remains, and the hellhound’s blood is still pooled on the floor.

Mary Jane breaks off at the kitchen and Sam’s stomach twists in remembered hunger. William leads Sam further down the hall to a T junction. The door at the end of the hall leads to the showers, the hall on either side is dotted with numbered doors like the dorms in the bunker. Someone is crying and it echoes strangely down the empty hall.

William guides Sam into the shower room, hands him the stack of towels and clothes and settles down on one of the benches by a wall full of cubbies. Sam enters one of the shower cubes and pulls the door closed behind him. He leaves his clothes on the bench in the changing area and pushes through the curtain to the shower.

Sam turns the water as hot as it will go, scrubs days worth of grit and grime from his skin. The black stain of hellhound blood washes from his skin leaving it flushed pink. He keeps his injured leg out of the flow, careful not to taint his own blood anew. When he is finally clean, he allows himself to just stand and soak in the heat. Surrounded by steam and the shampoo bottles and razors and random detritus of a lived-in space, Sam comes to three conclusions:

One, the first trial is hitting harder than last time. His body is already aching for rest, a bone-deep throb. A weakness is creeping in from his toes and fingers, the tips of his ears. He knows how fragile and loose-lipped he will get when the fever hits. There is no Dean this time to tend him, and he may have allies here, but he is surrounded by people who will take advantage of that. He is vulnerable. Which leads him to number two. He needs to power through these trials, convince the Men of Letters to make this happen as quickly as possible, passing from one trial to another with only enough time to sleep and recover his strength in between. And three, he is finishing this once and for all and dying a hero, just like Dean.

William leads Sam back up to his cell and follows him inside to work on Sam’s leg. His stitches are neat and even and he makes quick work of closing the wound. Mary Jane comes in as William finishes the last stitch. She’s holding a basket full of supplies.

Mary Jane looks over Sam’s leg with a critical eye. “You always did have the steadier hand for needlework.”

“Thanks, I think,” William says. “You find everything ok?”

“Yeah, here.” Mary Jane hands William the dark green leather journal that she was carying before and he flips to a marked page near the center of the book.

“We’re going to see if we can’t patch you up a bit, alright?”

“OK,” Sam says.

Working together, they lay out a small bowl and measure herbs into it. Four white candles are set in a circle around the bowl. William rummages through the supplies and takes out a small jar of oil that he passes to Sam.

“Here, rub a thin coating of that over wherever you’re hurt. Cuts, scrapes, bruises, anything like that.”

Sam gets some on his fingers. The faint smell of herbs permeates the air when he rubs the thin oil over the gashes in his leg. He slips off his shoes and socks and rubs some more on the blistered burn on the outside of his foot.

When he lifts his shirt to rub the oil across his ribs, the room goes still. He looks up to find William and Mary Jane watching at him.

“What the bloody hell happened there?” William asks, staring at Sam's ribs. They're mottled blue and green, deepening into purple where the studs dug into his skin.

“Toni happened,” Mary Jane snarls. She takes the jar from Sam’s hand. “Let me help.” She slicks the oil over Sam’s ribs and back, then sits back on her haunches

“Ready.”

“Alright, Sam, you should feel a tingle and some warmth, maybe some itching from the accelerated healing.”

William lights a small scroll of paper in one of the candles and drops it in the bowl. A flame dances up from the rim as the dry herbs catch and burn. Heat spikes through Sam’s leg, pins and needles racing through the muscle. A more gentle warmth throbs through his ribs and foot. The sensation in his leg is just starting to become uncomfortable when the feeling subsides altogether and the spell dissipates.

Sam’s foot feels better and the ache is completely gone from his ribs. The stitches in Sam’s legs look like they could come out in a day or two. It’s not as complete as Cas’s handiwork, but it’s impressive.

“Wow, that’s incredible. Thanks.”

“You’re welcome” William says, “We’ll do another round on that leg in a few hours, until then get some rest.”

“Sounds good. What time is it, anyway?” Sam asks through a yawn.

“Half past nine. Hell of morning, huh?” Mary Jane says. “Oh here, take this.” She reaches into the basket, pulls out a brown bag and hands it to Sam.

“Is that my lunch?” William asks, incredulous.

“Yup.” At William's scandalized look, Mary Jane rolls her eyes. “Don’t give me that look. You can pop off across the street and get more, can’t you. Sam can’t.”

“Look—” Sam’s growling stomach cuts him off.

“Well,” William says, laughing to himself, “I think that settles that.”

  
…

Sam finds himself in the bunker again. The lights in the kitchen and map room are off, the hallway lights dimmed for nighttime, but there’s light spilling out from the library. Dean is hunched over the same table, surrounded by charts and maps and what look like flight plans. Sam listens for voices, the hum of life that accompanied his last dream, but the bunker is quiet.

“Where’s Cas and, uh, the lady of the house?” Sam asks, a little embarrassed that he’s dreamed up some woman in Dean’s life and doesn’t know who it is. Some small part of him hopes it’s not Charlie. That wound is still too fresh, aches too deep.

Dean snorts, rubbing his eyes, “You mean Mom?”

“Yeah,” Sam chokes out. “Mom. Is she here? Can I see her?” Sam tries to swallow down the swooping nervous energy bubbling up from his stomach. Of course it would be Mom. Of course that is who Sam would dream up for Dean’s perfect world.

“Mom’s grabbing a couple hours of sleep. Cas is pounding the pavement. He thinks he’s got a lead on which flight they took you away on. Wait-” Dean finally looks up at Sam like he only just realized Sam isn’t supposed to be there. For moment, his eyes are wide and hopeful, but it doesn’t last.

“I fell asleep on the research again, didn’t I?” he asks, face sliding into a careful neutral. “That used to be your schtick, you know.”

“Maybe you should get some real sleep.”

“Can’t. Someone stole my gigantor brother,” Dean says. He scrubs a tired hand up and down over his face.

“Can we talk about something else?” Sam doesn’t want this. He doesn’t want to keep fighting off the desire to believe that Dean’s out there looking for him. He doesn’t want to have to remind himself again and again that Dean is gone for good.

“And what do you suggest we talk about?”

“Come on, this is a dream. We could talk about anything, any other case, an Elvis sighting in Vegas for all I care.”

“This is the only case that matters!” Dean shouts, slamming his palms flat against the table. “Unless you don’t want me to find you.”

“It’s not like that and you know it.” Sam’s stomach twists. He thought his visitor had given him these vivid, crisp dreams as a place to recharge, to find comfort. Now they just feel cruel. Sam ducks his head. The sharp sting of grief pricks behind his eyes.

“Hey,” Dean says, coming to stand in front of Sam. He lays one hand on the side of Sam’s neck, cups his cheek with the other, tilting Sam’s face up until their eyes meet. “I’m going to find you. I’m going to bring you home.”

Sam looks away. He can’t bear to see that earnest look on Dean’s face, the bedrock solidity of his belief. Because if he lets himself look, he’ll fall into the fantasy that maybe Dean is out there somewhere, coming for him.

“Sammy,” Dean says, giving Sam a gentle shake. “Say you believe me.”

Sam wants to so badly, even though he knows that this time dead is dead. But with Dean’s hands warm against his skin anything seems possible. Maybe some part of Dean survived, some spark. Maybe he’s waiting for Sam, somewhere in the empty, waiting to welcome him. If anyone could do it, it would be Dean.

“I believe you,” Sam says.

“Atta boy,” Dean says, brushing his thumb back and forth over Sam’s cheek. He touches the corner of Sam’s mouth and Sam shivers. The air between them becomes charged, the world slowing down.

“You’d really let me, wouldn’t you?” Dean says, eyes going heavy lidded. He sways into Sam, their chests touching as they breathe.

Sam traces along the line of Dean’s jaw with trembling fingertips, tilts his head and leans in.

The screech of the bunker door opening breaks through the quiet. Feet thud down the stairs at a run. “Dean,” Cas calls, voice a distorted echo.

“No,” Dean says a hair’s breadth from Sam’s lips, “No, not yet.”

But the press of his hands is already fading away. When Sam opens his eyes, Dean is translucent, an incorporeal mirage, but there is a promise in his eyes even as he fades away. Sam wakes with a start, the feeling of Dean’s stubble still tingling through Sam’s fingers.

…

Sam wakes up to the smell of fresh-baked bread. Mary Jane and William greet him with a basket of food and spell supplies. They unlock the cell and begin setting up the healing ritual.

William inspects the wounds on Sam’s legs. “Looks good, but we better take these out first.” He lays the journal out on the floor, turning to the marked page.

“Tell me about the journal,” Sam says and watches as William picks out the stitches.

“It’s our research.” Mary Jane answers, “my area of expertise is runes and sigils. William’s is healing magic.”

“The most powerful healing spells require blood to fuel them, but it’s really easy to twist them into something dark. Runes and sigils are self-powering, so we’ve been combining them to make safer spells.” William says.

“That’s incredible,” Sam says as he rubs the oil into his leg.

“I wish the council saw it that way. They won’t let us move forward with our research. They’re only interested in theory.” Mary Jane sighs. “What you said about doing something real? A lot of us want that. But it’s not what the Men of Letters do. Right now, the council is out there arguing about whether to let you continue the trials.”

“They’ll say yes,” Sam says. “It’s a win-win for them.”

“You’re going to have a hell of a time convincing them of that.” Mary Jane clenches her jaw as she lights the scroll, dropping it in the bowl. Heat flares in Sam’s leg, and when it’s done, his wounds are gone. They clean up their supplies and leave the cell, locking it behind them, but they don’t go far. She and William sit down on the other side of the bars and start laying out food.

“Can’t stay in the cell with you. They might be watching,” William says. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t have lunch together.”

Sam joins them, sitting on the ground with his back to the wall. There’s fresh bread, cheese, sliced apples, and some sort of cured salami. Sam’s mouth waters, it looks like a feast after more than a week on some pretty terrible prison food.

Sam and William dig in, but Mary Jane is staring off to the middle distance, twisting little pieces off her bread.

“Sam, there's something you should know,” Mary Jane says. “My hair isn't blonde.”

The non sequitur makes Sam want to laugh, but the guilty look on her face stops him in his tracks.

“I dyed it when you arrived. They wanted me to look a certain way, act a certain way. Your Mom’s name, her hair. All so I could get close to you, be the one you turned to."

“My mom’s name?”

“Mary Jane, isn’t my name. I mean it is, but no one calls me that anymore. I’ve gone by Jane since I was a kid.”

Sam suspected that she was chosen as his handler because of how she looked, but to see how engineered it all was makes Sam feel ill. The soft and shy persona, the dyed hair, the name change. Now, Sam can see the shape of the long con they were playing and the worst part is that it was starting to work. May have already worked if it wasn't for his nightly visitor filling that roll. Somewhere along the way, Sam had stopped trying to keep the upper hand when Mary Jane – no just Jane – was around. If she hadn’t run out of the cell the night before, who knows what Sam would have babbled about.

“I thought if I did what they wanted, they might let me start field testing my research,” Jane says. “I’m sorry, Sam. I shouldn’t have done it.”

Sam looks down at his hands where they sit folded in his lap, “You were doing what you thought you had to do. I’ve been there.”

“No,” Jane says, shaking her head, “It felt wrong the whole time, but I did it anyway.”

“Been there, too,” Sam says with a strained smile.

“It’s not just on you, Jane.” William says. “We all played along, me most of all.”

They pass the bread and cheese back and forth through the bars for awhile, eating in heavy silence.

When they're done eating, William leans forward, puts his elbows on his knees. “Alright, Sam. The least I can do is help you figure out how to sell this trial business to the old men. Tell me everything you know.”

...

It works. Sam talks to the council for two grueling hours, and uses every suggestion William and Jane gave him, and it works. The council agrees to move forward with the trials, Sam’s life a price they are willing to pay to close the gates of Hell forever.

…

Jane brings Sam his street clothes and then brings him to the council chambers. The white lines of a reaper's trap are painted across the fine wood. In the center stands the summoning bowl, waiting only for blood and the match to spark the spell.

Toni and Tompkins stand on the far side of the room, arguing in low tones.

“This is a wasted opportunity,” Toni hisses, “I’m not asking you to stop the trials, I’m asking you to delay. Give me one more day with him and I’ll get you all the answers you need.”

“The council has made its decision Lady Bevell, the matter is settled.” Tompkins waves his hand in a dismissal and turns away. When he spots Sam entering the room, a brief look of embarrassment flits across his face. It’s the first emotion other than disdain that Sam has seen him display, and the first time Sam has ever felt grateful to him. One day in Toni’s care was more than enough.

"Do you know which reaper you are summoning?" Sam asks.

Tompkins' upper lip curls and he tilts his chin up. "There is a reaper who worked with one of our hunters on a case involving a breach in the veil. We are not going into this blind, unlike you so often do, Mr. Winchester."

"Have either of you dealt with a reaper before?"

"Not as such, but we have all the information we need," Toni says, her face a mask of impassive lines.

“Reapers are not something you want to mess with lightly.”

"We'll see, Mr. Winchester," Tompkins says, "Mary Jane, you may leave."

"With all due respect, Mr. Tompkins, this ritual is directly related to my research and my duties as Mr. Winchester's guard. My place is here," Jane says.

"Very well. Lady Bevell, you may proceed."

Toni steps into the circle, and slices a neat line through her palm.

" _O theris tes, caleo se cai deo_ ," she intones in perfect pronunciation. She drops a match into the golden bowl and steps back out of the trap as the contents spark and flame.

A puff of white smoke swirls up from the chalice in a column. When it dissipates, a woman stands in its place. She is striking. The white of her shirt is bright against the gleaming, ocher brown of her skin. A long black braid is tossed over her left shoulder, trailing down below her hips.

She raises a brow and stares down the sharp lines of her nose at the motley group assembled around her. "For what purpose have you summoned me?"

“We require your services. We need you to bring this man to Hell and we need it done quietly” Tompkins says, gesturing to Sam.

The reaper throws her head back and laughs, her long braid sliding down her shoulder to swing heavily behind her back. "The last reaper to attempt transporting Sam Winchester in secret was killed that same day. Probably by an agent of Hell."

Tompkins steps forward, arms crossed across his chest. "There are spells. We can compel you."

"Try it," she says, ice in her voice. "Consult your books, ask the Winchester. These things rarely work out in the caster's favor.”

“Then we’ll leave you in this trap until you agree to cooperate.”

She shrugs, "I'm patient." She tilts her head back and scents the air. Her eyes pass over Sam, then Jane and Toni. When they lock on Tompkins, her mouth twists into a smirk "Seems like I will not have to wait long. Smells like rot in here. Someone really should have taken better care of their heart, I think. Besides, there is no door to Hell that I can walk a human through and not have Crowley know of it."

Tompkins pales, his hand going to his chest, but he sets his jaw and Sam knows he’s going to keep playing this all wrong.

"So let's make a deal,” Sam says.

"Your input is not required," Tompkins snaps.

"Enough from you," the reaper says and turns to Sam, "Let the boy speak."

"What's your name?" Sam asks.

The reaper tilts her head. "You may call me Priya," she says.

"Ok. Priya, I need your help. I'm trying to finish the trials."

"I can see that." She flicks her eyes over Sam's body again. "You are already changing."

"Uh, right. You don’t have to get me into Hell, just into Purgatory.”

“You mean to use the Purgatory portal. That’s a one way trip, boy. I won’t wait for you.”

“That’s fine, I can get myself out, all you have to do is get me there. You do it here and now, in this bunker and no one will know. Not Crowley, not any demon. And if I do this right, that's it, game over for them. There won't be a single demon left to come after you."

"You did not succeed last time."

“Last time I didn’t know the whole deal, I didn’t know the price, but I do now. I can’t promise you I’ll make it out of hell. But I can promise that if I make it to the finish line, there’s nothing that can stop me crossing over it. Not this time.”

Priya looks him up and down and Sam holds his breath through the inspection.

“A one way trip to Purgatory for the Winchester, and the Men of Letters never summon me again.” Priya looks to Tompkins. “Agreed?”

“Agreed.”

“Then all I require is Purgatory bound soul.”

“And I’m going to need a map of Maine,” Sam says.

...

Five minutes later Sam is bent over a map of the Hundred-Mile Wilderness wracking his brain to remember exactly where the portal comes out. He traces along Katahdin Iron Works Road, past where it intersects with the Appalachian Trail. He’s looking for a logging road that branches off to the west after the main road turns sharply north, but not the first one. They passed another on their way out. There. They are barely two miles apart and angle off the main road in the same direction.

He’s about to point to the far one when a wild thought zings through his mind. That’s where Benny’s buried. Sam’s heart starts racing in his chest, but he’s careful to keep his face neutral.

“Here,” he says, pointing to the first logging road instead. “Head down this road about a mile, then due northeast into the woods maybe a quarter mile. That’s where the portal opens.”

“You’re sure?” Tompkins asks.

“I’m sure.” The directions are right, they’re just off the wrong logging road. If Sam makes it out of Purgatory, he’ll emerge almost two miles from where the Men of Letters are waiting. He’s bought himself fifteen maybe thirty minutes if he’s lucky. If he’s really lucky, he’ll be carrying two souls when he touches down. “It took me a little over twenty-four hours to complete this trial last time, so that’s how long you have to get there.”

“And you expect me to trust that this is the correct location? What guarantee do we have that you’ll even be there?” Tompkins says.

“You don’t. This isn’t a milk run. This is crossing through Purgatory and Hell; I might die. But I started this because I wanted to, and as much as I may hate it, working with you is the best chance I’ve got to finish it,” Sam says, not bothering to hide his frustration or his determination. “You don’t have to trust me. You just have to get out of my way and let me do my job.”

Tompkins face flushes red with anger, “How dare-”

“Sir,” Jane cuts in, “Isn’t closing the gates of Hell worth the risk?”

Tompkins' jaw clenches and his nostrils flair, but he nods. “Fine. But if we’re doing this, we’re doing this right.” He reaches into the pocket of his robes and pulls out an old compass, cased in burnished gold. The compass needle is a thin shard of crystal that spins lazily in the casing.

“This compass will guide you to an innocent soul. It requires the blood of the operator to calibrate it. There is a small needle, here, under the back casing,” Tompkins flips the compass over and opens the case to reveal the small needle-tipped capillary tube. “Press your finger here, and it will draw up your blood, it will take a few moments to settle, but it should lead you to the nearest innocent soul.”

“Should?” Sam asks.

“This is a priceless artifact, be grateful you are permitted to use it at all,” Tompkins snaps.

The door to the council room bangs open and Toni drags in an emaciated creature. It’s humanoid, but there’s something strange about its proportions. It’s covered in disintegrating rags, skin pallid, and it can barely hold it’s head up on its boney neck. There are bruises along its ankles and wrists from restraints. It’s pathetic and Sam’s stomach twists with pity.

“I take it we’re ready?” At Tompkins curt nod, Toni grabs the creature, and pulls it in front of her. With one powerful thrust, she drives a long curved blade right through it’s heart. The wound smokes and the creature twitches and falls still.

“Will this do?” She asks, wiping her hands on a cloth she pulls from her back pocket. When she’s done, she drops it on the creature's smoking corpse. Jane makes a small noise of disgust beside Sam and he looks down to see her mouth pressed in a thin line of distaste. Sam knows the feeling.

“One more thing. You’re going to have to do something about that.” Priya gestures to Sam’s ankle where the shackle is hidden beneath his jeans.

“It stays on,” Tompkins says, “But we can remove the anti-teleportation spells. Jane, take care of it.”

Jane kneels by Sam’s foot and Sam hikes up his pant leg so she can access the shackle. Jane whispers out a few unintelligible words, laying her fingers gently across a series of runes. When she’s finished, all the runes she touched flare red and then fade out.

“We can still track you with that,” she warns, voice low enough that Tompkins and Toni won’t hear. She stands and hands Sam the demon knife from the sheath at her hip. “Good luck, Sam.”

Sam nods and smiles at her.

“Come, boy, take my hand,” Priya says and holds out her hand.

Sam checks his pocket for the compass and slips the blade into his waistband. He lays his hand over Priya’s, her skin a shock of cold.

With a lurch and shudder, the color melts from the world in dripping columns that twist and transmogrify into the gnarled trunks of trees. The forests of purgatory stand tall and imposing, the muted mimicry of life. Something slithers through the leaf litter behind them. Somewhere to their right, the sound of running water rings out.

“Follow the stream and you will find your portal,” Priya says. She releases Sam’s hand and steps away.

“Wait,” Sam says, now that he has her alone, “do you know a reaper called Billie?”

Priya nods, “I do.”

“Did she say anything about my brother? Do you know if he -”

Priya cuts him off with a dismissive wave of her hand. “Would my answer change your mission?”

“No,” Sam admits. What does it matter if Dean’s soul survived the bomb? It would only have been carried away to the empty. One way or the other, he’s just as gone, just as irretrievable. Sam swallows back the bile that churns in his stomach.

“Then do what you came here to do,” she says and vanishes. Yet another powerful being with a penchant for dramatic exits. Sam rolls his eyes, everyone’s a showman these days.

Sam cuts through the trees until he can see the stream and follows it down. He passes the spot where Ajay’s door opened into purgatory, and picks up his pace. The wind shifts and there’s the edge of a scent on the breeze, the hint of putrid flesh. Sam stops in his tracks, strains his ears with listening.

There’s the snap of a twig behind him. Sam whirls around, demon knife at the ready.

Benny stands behind him, purgatory blade in one hand and his other clutching a decapitated head by its stringy, black hair. Thick red blood drips onto the leaf litter. The body is nowhere in sight.

“I thought I must've finally gone crazy, smelling you,” Benny says. “And yet here you are.”

“Benny. Nice to see you and your, uh, friend.” Sam says nodding at the fanged head dangling from his fist.

Benny looks down and blinks, “Oh,” he says and tosses the head into the trees. “Guess I got a little distracted. It ain’t every day you smell a human in Purgatory. ‘Specially one you know. What the hell you doing here?”

“Oh you know, Just rescuing an innocent soul from hell. Come on, walk and talk.” Sam says and continues following the stream. He expects to feel his hackles rise when he turns his back on Benny, but it doesn’t happen. This is someone Dean trusted with his life, someone he trusted to bring Sam out of Purgatory. The least Sam can do is honor that, now that he understands Benny a little better.

“So same errand as last time. I thought that was a one time deal. Weren’t you boys trying to close-up Hell?” Benny asks.

There’s a snap and thud from the other side of the stream. They freeze. Benny draws up close beside Sam. He tips his head back, scents the air. No other sound comes, no sign of movement. Benny shakes his head and taps Sam’s shoulder. They move on.

“Didn’t work out. Consider this round two.” Sam says. They’re getting close. Sam can just make out the thick base of the three-trunked tree that contains the portal through the gloom.

“I’m having trouble believing Dean let you come back here,” Benny says. Sam’s heart drops to the pit of his stomach.

“He’s gone.” Sam ducks under a low hanging branch, determined to keep moving.

“What’d you say?”

“Dean’s dead,” Sam says.

Benny sucks in an unneeded breath. When Sam turns to face him, he’s just standing there, dead still, blade hanging loose in his fingers.

“What got him?” Benny asks, a tremble of anger rising through the sadness in his voice. His fingers tighten around the hilt of his knife.

“He sacrificed himself. Saved the world. The universe really.”

“Well,” Benny says. “That sounds about right.”

“Yeah.” Sam says, throat tight with emotion. He shakes his head, tries to dislodge thoughts of Dean so he can focus. For the first time in a long time he thinks about stopping, just laying down. God, he wants to sleep. Bury himself in his dreams, the only place where Dean still lives. But he can’t. He can’t because he isn’t really there. Dean’s dead. Dean’s gone. Fuck, breathe, just breathe.

“Sam?” Benny lays a hand on Sam’s shoulder.

Sam blinks and finds himself bent over his knees. “I’m fine. I’m fine,” he says, and gets his feet moving again. He has a job to do.

“Benny. I want you to come back with me.”

Benny laughs, incredulous. “You want me to go to Hell? With you?” And yeah, he doesn’t have much reason to trust Sam or even much reason to think well of him, but Sam has to try.

“No, not Hell, _back_. Earth, the living world, whatever you want to call it.”

“Thought you didn’t much care for me,” something changes in Benny’s voice, something quiet and surprised.

“Yeah, well, could be I was wrong,” Sam says and flashes Benny a smile. “Besides, it’s what Dean would want.”

The tree looks the same, the boulder back over the roots where the portal hides.

“I didn’t fit out there as it was, and now you’re telling me Dean is dead. Don’t sound like there’s much to go back to.”

“It’s got to be better than this,” Sam says, kneeling down to inspect the boulder.

“At least here you know what you’re fighting for.”

Sam stops what he’s doing and turns to look Benny in the eye. He meets Sam’s gaze but he’s hard to read and Sam can’t tell what he’s thinking.

“I didn’t say easier. I said better,” Sam says and turns his focus back to getting at the portal.

“But, it’s your choice. Try again, or give up and stay here forever. Just think about it. I’ll be back soon.” Sam pries the boulder back from the roots. The sucking vacuum from the exposed portal pulls at Sam’s hair and clothes.

“What makes you think I’ll be here?” Benny calls over the raging of the wind.

“Because I don’t think you’d let me cross Purgatory alone to get to that portal. Guess we’ll see.” Sam calls back over his shoulder.

“Can’t believe I’m doing this. Again.” Sam shakes his head and steps into the portal.

...

He lands in the musky dark of the same roughly hewn stone corridor as last time. Distant screams and the sound of murmured begging hang heavy with the smell of brimstone in the air. A chill races up Sam’s spine despite the heat. No matter how many times he walks the halls of Hell, he will never get used to it.

The compass is body warm from his pocket, spinning wildly when he pulls it out. Sam pops open the compartment on the bottom, exposing the capillary tube underneath. He presses his finger against it, a bright drop of red blood forms around the prick of it. It sucks his blood up into the heart of the compass. He closes the compartment and flips it over.

The directional needle stops its mad whirling, the crystal flushing red with Sam’s blood. It waves slowly back and forth and Sam begins to fear that it won’t work, or that an innocent soul is too far away for it to sense, but it finally settles, pointing Sam forward. Sam takes a breath and heads down the corridor. When he reaches the first junction, the compass needle wobbles, hesitating, before spinning sharply left. Sam creeps down the hall, ears aching with the strain of listening past the trembling wails of damned souls.

At every new corridor Sam pauses, and builds a small cairn of stone fragments from the crumbling walls – small monuments tucked against the wall and hidden in shadow, almost invisible unless you know to look for them – while he waits for the compass to calibrate and point the way. The needle points right this time and takes him down a hall lined with cells and souls shackled to the walls between them. Most seem to be beyond words, moaning and crying, some call out for lost loved ones by name, some call for their mothers. The worst, the ones that make Sam want to avert his eyes and just keep going are the ones who sense his presence, who call out to him, reach their hands beseechingly through the bars, begging.

Fingers brush against Sam’s sleeve, catching against the fabric. Sam turns to see an old man in stinking rags, his tissue-paper skin sagging from his bones under the weight of his pulsing blue veins. He’s skeletal, so thin his shoulder is edging through the gaps between the cell bars. A thick, gnarled beard hangs down past his jutting collar bones. The white hairs around his mouth are stained the rusty brown of old blood, thick black flakes of it caught in the tangles.

“I did it for her,” he says, voice high and thin. “They would have shunned her. She was sullied and everyone would have known it.” As he talks, blood seeps from the corners of his mouth, his voice becoming indistinct and garbled as if he’s talking around a mouthful of marbles. “She was a disgrace. She would have ruined our name” His jaw cracks open wide around a manic laugh, exposing his gorey mouth. All but a few of his teeth have come loose from their moorings, rolling in a heaving mass on his bloody tongue. They tumble from his lips, clacking as they knock against each other and fall to the floor. “I did what I had to do. I saved her.” The last teeth in his mouth tremble in their sockets, shake free of the gums to plink against the bars as they fall away.

Sam flinches back, his stomach roiling. The man closes his weeping sore of a mouth, but when he opens it again to say, “I did it for her,” his mouth is full of a new and perfect set of teeth. It’s then that Sam glances down at the ground. The floor of the man’s cell is carpeted in teeth, piles of them catching highlights and casting black shadows in the flickering torch light. They spill out of his cell and into the hallway and crunch under Sam’s feet when he finally pulls away.

After that he tries not to look into any of the cells, tries not to listen to any of the voices, but he can’t block them out entirely. A man adorned in gold, arms covered in bracelets, necklaces crowded around his neck, brow heavy under a bejeweled crown, tries desperately to pick up an apple with fingerless hands. He presses it between his spatulate palms and brings it to his mouth. He tries to bite into it, but It shoots from his grip to roll across the floor. He moans piteously and stoops to retrieve it.

At the next junction a woman in a dirt-smeared tailored jacket and knee-length pencil skirt paces back and forth, stalks through her cell like a big cat at the zoo. The thought sits heavy in Sam’s gut and he looks away, unwilling to make a spectacle of her. He picks up his pace but not before he hears her say. “I didn’t do anything. He’s the one who hurt them. What was I supposed to do?”

Forward the compass points and Sam pushes on, the voices around him rising and falling in a cacophony that makes Sam’s skin crawl. More than once he is forced to duck into an alcove or take a wrong turn to wait for a demon to pass. He watches a woman as she is dragged from her cell by laughing demons, “Time for the rack.” She prays as they carry her away but the compass needle does not even shiver in her direction.

A high, young voice stops Sam in his tracks. “I had to try. I had to to try. I had to try.”

The compass needle is quivering in place trembling and pointing Sam forward. As he draws even with the cell, it swings left, pointing directly at the teenager huddled in the corner. Her arms are wrapped around her legs, face pressed into her knees and hidden by the curtain of her black hair. She’s dirty and thin and shivering.

“I just wanted her to be ok,” she whispers into her jeans.

Sam tucks the demon blade into his waistband and covers it with his shirt. He crouches down, careful to make himself small and asks in his softest voice, “Who did you want to be ok?”

The girl’s head whips up and she stares at Sam with wide, terrified eyes. She scrambles backwards trying to push herself further into the corner.

“Hey, Hey, it’s ok. I’m not going to hurt you. My name is Sam. What’s yours?”

“Elvira,” she says, lips trembling with fear.

“Hi Elvira. I’m here to help you.”

“Liar!” Elvira says and shakes her head violently back and forth. She holds out a hand as if to ward Sam away, despite the fact that there are cell bars separating them. Sam has no idea what he did to set her off. So he backs off, tries a different tactic.

“You said before that you just wanted someone to be ok. Can you tell me who that was?”

The girl lowers her arm to look at Sam, surprised by the question. She can’t be anymore than 17, but she measures Sam with careful consideration. “It was my sister. My baby sister. She was sick. The doctors said she wasn’t going to get better. She was just a baby. I didn’t want her to die. I had to try to help her.” She recites the story in the same rote way as the man with his piles of teeth. It makes Sam shiver.

“What did you do?” Sam asks, though he has a good idea and it makes his stomach turn with the unfairness of it.

“There was a lady in the waiting room. She said she was there to help me. That I’d get to see my sister grow up for ten more years, that all I had to do was say yes. I had to try.” Tears roll down Elvira’s cheeks and drip from her chin. “She lied. She wasn’t there to help me.”

“No, she wasn’t. But I am. See I got hurt real bad once and my brother made the same kind of deal you did to protect me. He’d still be in this place if someone hadn’t saved him. That’s what I’m here to do, Elvira,” Sam says, voice half-caught in his throat, “You don’t belong here. Let me take you somewhere better.”

“Is it going to hurt?”

“Only for a second,” Sam promises.

…

The last of Elvira’s soul is spiraling down into Sam’s arm, when a heavy hand lands on his shoulder and yanks backwards. Sam goes sprawling across the floor. His head smacks against the hard stone. Sam crawls back, tries to get some distance between himself and the demon standing over him.

“Holy shit, Sam Winchester!” A wide grin spreads across the demon’s face as he advances on Sam. Sam tries to sneak his hand under his back to grab the knife. “Rumor has it that all sorts of folks have been looking for you. Guess they’ll never find you now.”

The demon raises one foot, ready to stomp on Sam’s stomach when something slams into him from behind. Sam sees a blur of gray, and sharp fangs as the attacker rides the demon all the way to the ground and lands right next to Sam.

“Hey Chief,” Benny says, shooting Sam a toothed grin.

Sam grabs the demon knife from the small of his back and plunges it through the demon’s heart.

“How’d you find me?” Sam asks as they both push to their feet.

“Turns out I’m getting pretty good at tracking your scent,” Benny says grinning. A movement in Sam’s peripheral vision has Sam lunging forward to grab Benny by the shoulder, hauling him to the side. A knife embeds itself into the stone right where Benny’s throat was. Sam flips the demon knife in his hand and throws it in a neat arc. A demon falls back against the wall, light flaring out from the blade in his chest.

“Well, ain’t this a party,” Benny says. “Looks like you got what you came for.” He nods at Sam’s glowing forearm.

“Yeah, now let’s get the hell out of here.”

“Good plan,” Benny says and claps a hand to Sam’s shoulder. They head back down the corridor, stopping only to grab the demon blade. It’s easier now with Benny taking point. He can smell the demons before Sam can see them. They duck into an alcove to avoid a patrolling demon and Sam’s coat pocket knocks into the wall, the heavy metal of the compass clanking against the stone. Sam pulls it out to check for damage and he sees the needle. It isn’t spinning. It’s pointing down a new corridor, fixed on its next target. An innocent soul.

Sam’s been so focused on his task, that he’s tuned out the horrible sounds of hell, the cacophony of wailing and begging, the screams. It all comes flooding back in as he stares at the compass needle. Somewhere down that corridor is someone like Elvira, like Dean, someone who sacrificed their soul. Who knows how many are stuck down here, how many innocent souls like Bobby that Crowley kept simply because he could. Sam can’t save them all. They are going to be stuck here, forever. And maybe it doesn’t mean much, there wasn’t much hope of rescue before, but Sam is still closing the door on them. It’s still the death of hope and possibility. It’s still his choice.

“Sam.” Benny calls from the next junction. “This ain’t exactly the time for sightseeing.”

Sam shakes himself free of his thoughts and takes off down the corridor after Benny. It’s worth it. He has to believe it’s worth it.

…

  
Sam steps through the portal back into Purgatory and right into the snarling face of a werewolf. He doesn’t think, lets instinct take over and drops into a crouch. He lunges, barrels straight into its knees. They fall to the ground, scrabbling for their fallen blades.

Benny comes out of the portal swinging. He lops off the head of a second werewolf trying to grab Sam from behind. The one beneath Sam flinches when his companion’s body hits the ground. Sam wrenches the blade free of his slack grasp. Sam rears back and slams the blade through his neck, severing the spinal cord.

Benny holds out a hand in offering. Sam grabs it and lets himself be pulled to his feet. He tucks away the demon knife and keeps the werewolf’s blade. Better for beheading.

“We better move.”

“Yeah, I suppose so,” Benny says. He points with his blade towards a gap in the trees and they’re off, running through the woods of purgatory, already dripping with blood.

They make it all the way to the base of the hill below the portal. It whirls to life, a vortex of air and shadow, and Sam starts to think they’ve gotten incredibly lucky, but when he turns around, Benny is gone.

It’s silent but for the rushing wind. Sam turns a slow circle, but there’s no sign of Benny. He wouldn’t have just run off, Sam’s sure of it. Something must have him.

A short sharp cry, Benny’s voice, breaks through the silence. It’s coming from a clearing maybe thirty yards away. He can just see the edge of Benny’s arm, restrained against his side by his captor, as they shelter behind a wide tree trunk.

Adrenaline spikes through Sam. His instinct is to run to Benny’s aid, but he holds himself back. It’s too easy, it’s a trap. It has to be. There’s no other reason to take Benny and keep him alive. Sam has to be careful. He’s off his game. He’s already been in two skirmishes too many, and he’s aching bone deep from the trials, weary from long hours of wandering hell. He can’t just run in. He’s got to get control of the playing field.

Sam circles wide around the clearing. He slips off his coat, tucking the compass into his pants pocket. There’s a thicket of brambles nearby and Sam hides his jacket inside it. He spots a shadow up ahead, cast by a tall tree but it’s too thick and bulky at the base. An ambush.

Sam backs off, slips behind a nearby tree and throws a rock into the thicket, hoping the sound and the scent of his coat will draw out whatever is hiding in the trees. Sure enough the shadow peels off from the tree and a vamp, fangs bared, steps into view. Sam ducks away and waits. He can hear the vamp’s careful footsteps and he chances a glance. The vampire is nosing around the thicket, his back to Sam. Sam slides up behind him and takes off his head with one clean swipe. The body tips back as it falls and Sam catches it, eases it to the ground.

He backtracks then, circling around from the other side until he can get a full view of the clearing and a better look at Benny. He’s being held by two more vamps. A thick-set man has him in a bear hug from behind, arms pinned and mouth muffled. The other, a woman with long dark hair, has a knife pressed against Benny’s neck.

Sam scans the trees around them and spots another vamp, a short and wiry man, waiting in hiding, waiting for Sam to show himself. He uses every trick he’s ever learned to move fast and silent through the trees. Sam’s only a few feet away when the vamp spins on his heel, but it’s too late. The wide arc of Sam’s blade slices his head clean off.

The severed head rolls into the clearing. “Fuck,” Sam curses the element of surprise gone, but the woman’s blade drifts away from Benny’s throat as the head rolls to a stop at her feet. Sam takes his chance.

He charges into the clearing and Benny lunges back. He drives the vamp behind him into a tree, breaks free of its grasp. Sam dodges a blow to the shoulder and slams into the woman, bears her to the ground. He takes an elbow to the sternum. The blow knocks the breath out of him, leaves him shaken and gasping. The vamp flips them and pins Sam to the ground. Sam can’t catch his breath and his arms and legs won’t cooperate, moving too slow. Fangs slice a glancing blow across his shoulder as Sam bucks, trying to unseat her.

Benny tackles her, teeth tearing right through the soft flesh of her throat. The vamp gurgles out a shocked breath, her eyes wide and liquid dark with fear as her body twitches against the ground, her leg kicking out against the corpse of the vamp Benny took down.

“You should have left me alone,” Benny chokes out, voice thick and clumsy with some shared history that Sam isn’t privy too. Benny hovers over her until she falls still.

Benny turns on him, hauls off and throws a punch, but it never connects, thudding into the dirt next to Sam’s head.

“You ain’t got the sense God gave a flea!” Benny spits, vicious and snarling. “Why the hell didn’t you just go?”

“That’s not happening,” Sam says, shoving Benny off and struggling to stand on shaky feet. “I’m not leaving you here. I’m not gonna do it. Dean didn’t burn your bones, man. He wanted you back out there, figuring out how to live in the world like the rest of us. Let me do this, for both of you. Besides, If you hate it, I’m sure you’ll have no trouble annoying some hunter into chopping your head off. So stop wasting time and come with me already.”

“Winchesters,” Benny says. He sags back on his heels, tilts his head up, the gray sky a low ceiling of clouds above him. “Dean was right about you, you know. You are a genuine pain in the ass.”

A surprised laugh bursts out of Sam, “Well, it takes one to know one.”

“That it does,” Benny says, wiping his mouth off against his sleeve and pushing to his feet. “Let’s go.”

…

Sam crashes to the ground in a soft bed of leaf litter. He scrambles to his feet and tries to get his bearings. The logging road should be southwest of the portal. The gibbous moon is low in the sky, but it provides enough light for Sam to see by. He uses it to orient himself then takes off through the trees at a jog.

He has to be fast. Time, the tracking anklet, and his weakened body are all working against him. The Men of Letters may already know he’s back on earth and be heading right for him. As he runs, he prays.

“Cas, I don’t know if you can hear me with this thing on my ankle, but I’m in Maine. I started the trials again, and I’m finishing them this time. Don’t worry about me, ok. This is what I want,” Sam says. He breaks through the brush onto the logging road. Sam heads east toward the main road trying to remember where Dean parked the Impala some three years ago. “I got Benny out of Purgatory and he’s going to need your help. Get here if you can. And, uh, thanks. For everything.”

There’s a huge rock in the center of the road that pings Sam’s memory. It sticks up from the raised mound between the two worn-in tire treads, tall enough that it would have scraped the bottom of the Impala if Dean tried to drive over it. This must be where Dean parked.

Now he just has to find Benny’s body. All Sam knows for sure is that Dean buried him. It’s a gamble whether he did it here or near where he killed him. Crossing state borders with a body in the back is always risky, but it’s not like Dean can afford to get pulled over on a regular day. No, Sam’s banking on the fact that Dean brought him here, buried him somewhere near the car as a contingency.

Sam scans the tree line. There’s a huge oak tree just off the road, twice as big as any other tree nearby. Sam circles it, but nothing stands out and he doesn’t have time to dig and hope for the best. A little further into the woods Sam spots a dead tree that’s fallen against its neighbor and gotten wedged between its branching trunk. It forms a perfect triangle with the ground. Large sheaths of bark spill across the ground beneath the angle of the dead tree. It looks like it’s been there for awhile.

Sam crouches down under the tree, sifting through leaves and bark. There’s a marking at the base of the tree, half obscured by leaves. Sam brushes them away to reveal a tiny carving of the Aquarian Star. A grin spreads across Sam’s face. This is it.

Sam clears the ground of leaves, then grabs up a wide chunk of bark. The earth is soft and loamy, parts easily beneath his makeshift shovel. Only a few inches down Sam runs into the edge of a duffel bag. He redoubles his efforts, digs despite the weakness creeping into his arms, working to uncover the rest of the bag. A flicker of light catches his eye and he looks off to the southwest.

Flashlight beams flash through the trees on the other side of the logging road. They’re still far away, but Sam has to hurry. He tosses the bark aside in favor of digging with both hands. He traces out the edges of the bag and clears off the top with wide sweeps of his arms.

A putrid rush of air nearly knocks him on his ass when he gets the zipper undone. “A little ripe there, Benny,” Sam says as he kneels up over the bag.

A quick draw of the demon blade over his left arm and Sam is chanting, “ _Anima corpori. Fuerit corpus. Totem resurgent._ ” A red light shines beneath his skin and pours from the wound onto the rotten corpse below. The reformation is nearly instantaneous, and the next thing Sam knows, Benny is sitting up in his grave.

“I’ll be damned. You did it,” Benny says, rubbing dirt from his eyes.

“One reanimated body, as promised,” Sam says. “Hey, you got anything to write with?”

Still disoriented, Benny pats down his pockets. He pulls out some spare change, a receipt and one of those stubby pencils that sit in cups next to Library computers. Sam snatches them up and stands, starts scribbling down important numbers.

“Listen, I’m with some people right now who would kill you on sight, so you’re going to have to lie low until we’re gone.”

“You failed to mention that in the sales pitch,” Benny says as he climbs to his feet.

“Yeah, sorry about that.”

The Men of Letters are closer now, their flashlights cutting bright swaths through the forest. Sam can just hear their voices as they call to one another. He finishes scribbling down the numbers and shoves the list at Benny.

“This first one’s for Cas. He’s back and doing better. He can help you out, give you a place to stay. If he’s not around, try this one next. It’s for Garth. He was a hunter, but he’s a werewolf now.”

“Sam,” Benny says, but he stops, scenting the air.

“Yeah, I know, I know. But he’s making it work. He’s a real character, but you might be able to find a place with him.”

“Sam!” Benny says, trying to break in again. His brow is creased in confusion, an anxious light in his eyes, as he continues to scent the air. Sam flicks a look over his shoulder. He can make out figures between the trees now. He barrels on.

“This last one, this one’s a friend. Her name’s Jody. If you could just tell her thanks from us and let her know that me and Dean went out fighting the good fight.”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you” Benny snarls, “Dean-”

Sam slams a hand over Benny’s mouth. He can hear Toni’s voice now, directing the searchers. They are way too close and Sam is out of time.

“Whatever you do,” Sam whispers, “stay out of sight. They will kill you.” Sam lets go and rushes out to the road. He glances back to see Benny wide-eyed, staring after him. Benny rocks forward on his toes, like he might come after Sam, but Jane breaks through the brush on the other side of the road, and Benny melts back into shadow.

“You made it,” Jane says, jogging up to him. Behind her Toni, Ms. Watts and four men who are built like linebackers step out of the woods.

“Yeah,” Sam agrees, “barely.”

...

The fever starts as soon as they pack Sam into the back of a painter’s van. He’s got the whole back seat for himself so he stretches out and feels the fever spread through his body. He tries to stay alert but he drifts in and out of awareness. Nearly three hours later they turn down the dirt drive to a ramshackle farmhouse in the middle of nowhere.

As soon as they get inside Sam makes a beeline for the bathroom, and no one stops him. A hacking cough wracks his body as he bends over the sink. When he catches his breath he spits out a mouthful of blood, vivid red against the porcelain. His reflection is pale and thin, dark circles under his eyes. The second trial is already taking its toll as his fever spikes.  
  
The sucking pop of her arrival makes Sam flinch in surprise. It’s overwhelming in the small bathroom. This is the first time she's come to him in the light. Her power roils through the room in writhing columns of black smoke. He has seen this smoke before.  
  
Sam's heart rate spikes as adrenaline tries to sharpen his hazy, fever-addled mind.  
  
"Sam, what have you done?" The harmonic layers of her voice melt away, focus down to one, a voice Sam recognizes.  
  
"No, it's not possible." Sam says.  
  
The smoke coalesces into the shape of a woman. Her brown hair tumbles loose about her shoulders, her black dress spreading like spilled ink across the floor and up over the door, sealing them in. The sharp lines of her face and the pleading tilt of her eyes are aimed at Sam.  
  
"Amara," he whispers. "How? You're dead." Sam's hands are shaking, fear sours the back of his throat.  
  
"Chuck? The sun?" It's not the question Sam wants to ask, but it's the only one he can manage. His mind is still whirling, racing with possibilities. If Amara’s alive, and the sun is alive, then-. But if he's wrong it might just wring him dry of every drop of energy he's got left. If he's wrong, it might just kill him.  
  
"I healed him. All I ever wanted was my brother. Dean helped me get that back, he helped us understand each other again."  
  
Sam's eyes are burning, tears gathering in the corners, his face twisting up. He has to know, has to ask. "And the bomb? Is he alive? Is Dean alive?"  
  
“He is.”

It's like a kick to the chest. Sam stumbles backward into the sink. Has to lean back and catch himself on the edge to stay on his feet. Hot tears well in his eyes, tremble on the tips of his lashes.  
  
Relief so overwhelming it hurts crashes through Sam. He takes a moment to breathe, to calm his racing heart, and to think. The world reorients itself into its proper shape, because somewhere out there Dean is alive, fighting, and looking for Sam. The dreams, oh god, the dreams. He remembers Dean’s frantic insistence that he would find Sam. He remembers the feel of Dean's stubbled jaw against his fingertips, how they tingled with sensation long after Sam had woken up.  
  
"The dreams are real, aren't they? That was really Dean."  
  
"It was."

“Can you – can you take me to him?”

Amara nods at the shackle still attached to Sam’s ankle. “Whatever magic that is, it’s powerful. I can’t move you without damaging your soul. And I have made a promise only to observe, not to interfere.”  
  
Sam nods absently, thoughts spinning away. Dean was alive this whole time. He should have known. He should have figured it out. He feels adrift, a ship whose anchor line has been cut. He'd been so focused on that one tethering point – Dean is dead, Dean is gone circulating through his body with every heartbeat– that he had ignored all evidence to the contrary, and now. And now he's ruined everything.  
  
"Oh god," Sam gasps, "the trials."  
  
"The trials? Are they the reason you are so - " Amara tilts her head, eyes Sam critically, "damaged?"  
  
"You have to understand," Sam says, desperation in the frantic way his voice shakes, in the way he opens his arms, beseeching. His hands still tremble. "I thought Dean was dead. I never would have – I was trying to do the right thing."  
  
"You're frightened," Amara observes, her brow creased in concern, dark eyes earnest on Sam's. "What happens at the end of these trials?"  
  
"The gates of hell get slammed closed, forever. And, uh, I die."  
  
Amara shakes her head in confusion, "Why would you do that?"  
  
"I thought Dean was dead." It shouldn't be his first answer, Sam knows that. He should say that he did it because the gates of Hell should be closed, but that wasn't enough for him last time and it's not in him to abandon Dean. Not anymore. Except that’s exactly what he’s doing now. “It was my chance to make up for some of the things I've done.”

Sam’s head is reeling. He didn't mean for this to happen. He was trying to live up to Dean's legacy. He was trying to put things right. He doesn't want to imagine what Dean will say once he hears Sam has started the trials again. He doesn't know how to tell Dean that he has to finish them this time. Sam never meant to abandon him like this, but what else can he do now that he's started down this path?  
  
"How many trials are left?" Amara asks.  
  
"One."  
  
"So this is why he insisted I visit you now." Amara says, and reaches into the folds of her dress. “He asked me to give you this.” She holds out her hand to Sam. On her palm sits a plastic tea light, one of those fake candles that restaurants sometimes use. Sam takes it from her, perplexed. It is small and white and has a tiny LED light bulb nestled inside the transparent, waxy plastic of the fake flame. The curled tip of the flame bends under the pressure of his thumb.

"When you say he, who do you mean?"  
  
"You know who I mean," she says, not unkindly.  
  
Sam turns the small plastic candle over in his hand, rubs his thumb along the raised print on the battery cover. Made in China. "Chuck?"  
  
"Does that surprise you?"  
  
"I guess I thought Chuck didn't really want anything to do with me. We, uh, we didn't really talk when he was at the bunker. Did he say – did he say why he sent this? What I’m supposed to do with it?"

Amara shakes her said. “He only sent this message, ‘May it be a light to you when all other lights go out.’”

Sam blinks and replays the words in his mind, wonders briefly if he has fallen into some kind of fever dream. “God’s message for me is a Lord of the Rings rip-off?”

“He assured me you would understand its meaning.” Amara says, sounding alarmed and a little lost.

Sam can’t help but laugh at that, it bursts out of him, brief and unbelieving, “I have no freaking clue what it means.”

“How very like him,” she sighs, and Sam feels like an ass.

“It’s ok. I’ll figure it out.” He flashes Amara a haphazard smile. “Can I ask you one last thing? All this time you spent visiting me. Why?”

She takes a tentative step towards him, reaches out slowly, giving him time to pull away. Sam holds himself still, lets her approach. Amara lays her hand on his cheek.  
  
"You feel it, don't you? The connection between us. I didn't, at first. My connection with your brother is stronger. It was all I could focus on besides getting my revenge. Dean wore the Mark and I was certain he was the one who set me free. But you found the spell, ensured that it would be cast, didn't you?"  
  
"Yeah." Sam still feels the weight of that decision. A lot of people died, a lot of people lost their souls because of that choice. But after knowing her, he can’t say she belonged caged for eternity. He doesn’t know what that means, how skewed his sense of right and wrong is, how distorted his view of the big picture has become, or how that balances out in the ledger of his good and bad deeds.

“My brother and I are not the same. We struggled to decide how to live our new lives. I wanted to leave the galaxy, go far away but he wanted to stay close enough to keep an eye on this world. I didn’t understand the appeal. Humans are strange to me. Chuck insisted I give them a chance, I insisted there was only one human that would ever matter to me. So, we made a wager.

“Chuck chose the human, and I was to observe them for one week and see if I could understand, could come to care for another human. So I watched you. Do you know what I saw? I saw someone like me. Someone who knows what it is to be caged, the inescapable despair of it, how it changes you. I saw someone confused and hurting but unlike me, you were still somehow kind and gentle. And you were so alone.”

Sam bows his head. He’s been trying so hard to keep it together, to not let himself be twisted by all the horrible things he’s seen and done, the weight of his time in hell, of knowing that he has spent more years with Lucifer than he ever will with Dean. It’s hard to hear himself talked about so openly, to be forced to think about it in such plain terms.

“You have done well,” Amara says. She leans forward and presses her lips to Sam’s forehead. Sam’s heart clenches in his chest and his eyes burn.

Amara steps away and Sam can feel the changing pressure that means she’s gathering her power to leave.

“Wait, what were the stakes?”

“If Chuck won, we stay near Earth, practice a policy of observation but noninterference when we visited”

“And if you had won?”

“I was free to shape the world to my liking, to unmake it if I so chose. But between you and me, I have grown tired of destruction.”

“You aren’t just destruction,” Sam says. “You’ve helped me.”

She smiles and there is the weight of eons behind it, “I suppose I did. My brother and I are leaving, for a time. I will not come again. Good luck, Sam.”

…

They drag Sam to the basement and shove him down the stairs. They lock the door behind him, chant spells into the wood. Sam lays down on the cot tucked in the corner and curls up under the thin blanket. He wants to sleep, half-desperate and half-terrified to see Dean again in his dreams. He tries to count his breaths and calm his mind, but his thoughts are too turbulent. Chuck’s gift is an uncomfortable point of pressure where it rests in his pocket, caught between his hip and the mattress. Exhaustion and confusion burn through Sam’s mind just as the fever burns through his body. He doesn’t even know how to begin processing everything that just happened. It’s too much.

Sam rubs his burning eyes, leaves his hands covering his face. When the tears come, he doesn't fight them. He cries quietly into his cupped palms, overwhelmed by warring relief and regret, and thinks, _I'm so sorry, Dean_.


	3. Chapter 3

“You’ll never guess who called me,” Dean says.

Sam blinks and looks around. He’s in a motel room. Beige walls, beige curtains, and purple beaded lampshades. Dean’s sitting on one of the beds, arms crossed and big brother frustration etched into every line of his body.

“I think I have a pretty good idea, actually,” Sam says. He can picture Benny calling Cas, being passed off to an incredulous Dean.

“The trials, Sam? What the hell were you thinking?” Dean asks, voice trembling between anger and fear.

“I was thinking,” Sam says, sitting on the opposite bed, “that my brother was dead and that I was going to die in an underground cell. But mostly I was thinking maybe I could do some good before I go.”

“What about that speech you made last year about me pulling you back and how it was the right thing?”

“What about that speech you made in that church about turning the tide on hell, killing hellhounds, curing demons?”

“Jesus,” Dean growls, “that’s exactly what you would say.”

“About that," Sam says, rubbing his hands up and down his thighs, looking anywhere but at Dean. "These aren’t just dreams, I’m real.”

“No, not possible.”

“It is when Amara gives you a psychic connection to your brother as a party favor.”

“Amara?” Dean asks, nostrils flaring, “Did she hurt you?”

“No, it wasn’t anything like that. She just kept me company, mostly. I didn't even know it was her until a few hours ago. She did give me something from Chuck, though. Said it was a gift. I have no idea what it means.”

Sam reaches into his pocket and pulls out the plastic tea light. He holds it out to Dean who turns it over in his hands.

“A fake candle. Seriously? Have you tried turning it on?”

"I've been afraid to," Sam says.

Dean hands it back to Sam, and Sam inspects it again, tests its weight. He flips it over and pops open the battery compartment, laughing at what he finds.

“It doesn’t even have batteries.” 

“Wow. Dick move, Chuck,” Dean says and Sam shakes his head and tucks the candle away.

Dean's chewing on his bottom lip and Sam can tell he's working up to something, so he waits it out. Bites his tongue to keep from saying anything stupid.

“How long have you known? About the dreams," Dean asks.

“I just found out.”

“That means…” Dean trails off, tongue flickering nervously across his lower lip.

“Yeah,” Sam says, a flush rising into his cheeks, but he doesn’t look away from Dean’s intent stare. He lets him see everything. A frisson of energy darts between them, pulls Sam in. He shakes his head to break free of it. He can't get distracted, there are things he needs to say.

“I have to finish the trials this time, Dean." Sam says, keeping his eyes on Dean's, "There's no going back, no way out. But it's more than that. It's the right thing to do and I need you to back me up on this.”

“I know,” Dean says through clenched teeth.

A hollow clang and the sound of footsteps echo around the room and Sam jumps, startled. The smell of burning herbs wafts through the air, chased by the sound of chanting.

“Do you smell that?” Sam asks.

“What the hell is going on?”

“I don’t know.” Sam stands to look around the room but a wave of dizziness nearly knocks him flat. The sound of chanting rises over the rush of blood through his ears.

The motel room shifts, the walls turning white, the dimensions of the room shrinking. The beds melt into each other, transmuting into one large, brass-framed bed with a crisp white comforter. Candles flicker on the end tables, casting long shadows in the dim room.

Toni offers Sam a glass of wine.

An idea floats to the front of the fog in Sam’s mind. It’s date night.

The candles make her hair glow, and Sam reaches out to tuck a loose strand behind her ear.

“Cheers,” Toni says, and clinks her glass against Sam’s. Sam drinks the wine in one go. It must be his favorite vintage, though he’s never cared much for wine.

Toni sets aside their empty glasses and starts working on the buttons on Sam’s shirt.

“I still can’t believe you were able to get the codex out of the – what was it again?”

“The Werther Box.” Sam says, but something doesn’t feel right. There’s a pounding in Sam’s head that tells him that he shouldn’t be here.

Sam scans the room and spots Dean standing just outside the door. He bangs his fist against the open doorway, but it smashes into an invisible barrier. And now that Sam sees him, the sound of his pounding fist booms through the room. Toni startles, eyes wide, but she ignores him.

“Sam, it’s just us tonight,” Toni says, drawing Sam's attention back to her. She slips her hands through the open sides of his shirt, runs them up his chest to his neck and back down. Right, right, it’s date night. Of course.

Toni balances her hands on Sam’s shoulders and rises to her toes, angling for a kiss.

Someone calls his name, faintly and from far away. Sam turns to look for the source of the sound and Toni’s lips glance off his cheek.

It’s Dean. He shouldn’t be here. It’s date night. No, no, that’s not right either. Nervous confusion flushes through Sam and he fights against the haze in his mind. Jane’s warning swims to the surface. _She_ _’s very good with spell-work._ _Y_ _ou can’t trust her._

“Sam,” Dean calls and with Sam looking right at him, he hears it as clearly as if Dean were standing beside him. Dean’s chest is heaving, anger bright in his eyes. He throws himself against the barrier again and the fog in Sam's head starts to lift.

Toni touches his chest again and Sam jolts back, grabbing the sides of his shirt and holding it closed. He can’t trust her, but he can trust Dean.

“Dean?” All of Sam’s confusion trembles through his voice.

Dean snarls in rage and reaches for the gun tucked against the small of his back. He aims it straight at Toni’s head and fires twice. The bullets slam into the invisible barrier, an inch apart, one for each eye socket.

“Touch my brother again and I’ll kill you.”

Toni smirks and raises an eyebrow in challenge, but the slant of her mouth is drawn in tight lines. Whatever this spell is, she didn’t account for Dean – the real Dean – disrupting it or the shadow of Amara’s power that brought him here.

Sam didn’t overcome the devil and kick out Gadreel to be trapped here and made vulnerable by some stuck-up accent in a pantsuit. Sam unclenches his fist from his shirt and lets it fall open again.

“Sam, no,” Dean says, desperate. “You’ve got to fight it.”

“Get out,” Sam says and Dean flinches, but Sam slants him a look, raises his eyebrows a fraction of an inch, speaks to him in the secret language of their bodies.

Dean sets his jaw and tilts his head down, watches Toni from under his brow, eyes predator bright. The corner of his mouth turns up in the barest hint of a smirk and his shoulders relax. Sam can feel his presence pushing toward him from the barrier, no panic now only anticipation.

Toni steps forward, still trying to suck Sam back into the thrall of the spell, hand raised to lay against Sam’s bare chest again.

Sam grabs her wrist and her eyes widen in surprise, “I told you to get out.” Sam reaches deep into himself remembers what it felt like to push his way past Lucifer, to strain and fight and cast Gadreel out. He grabs hold of that energy, presses out against the spell. A wind picks up, whips through the room and the candles gutter out.

“You have two choices here,” he says, “Go now or I will do what is necessary to motivate you.”

“I don’t think you understand how this works. You can’t -” she starts.

“Enough,” Sam snaps. The barrier around the spell shatters. Dean steps forward, kicking through the shards like shattered glass, and stands beside Sam, smirk bloomed full on his face.

“Should have gone when you had the chance.” Dean says.

Sam pushes with everything he has. He can feel the fever burning through him a counterpoint to his power, trying to drain the strength from him. His focus wavers. The wind dies down. Dean lays a hand in the small of Sam’s back like a balm and energy surges anew through Sam’s body.

Toni is muttering to herself, trying to bolster or change the spell but Sam won’t give her the chance. He raises a palm and Toni flies backwards into the wall. She hangs there for a suspended second, pinned and panting, terrified. The wall bends, and she flies through, the whole room, bed and candles, folding in around her, a two dimensional backdrop for some amateur play. The whole mass folds in on itself and is whisked away like it’s being sucked down a drain. The real world begins to fade back in and Sam is back in the basement, half awake and tied to a chair.

Sam can’t rouse himself fully. He’s trapped between awake and asleep, his head a foggy mess of confusion. Somewhere in the background he can hear Toni and Ms. Watts arguing as they pack up the spell supplies, but their voices are far away and indistinct.

“So this is where they’ve been keeping you. Farmhouse, maybe?” Dean crouches beside Sam. He’s as translucent as a partially manifested spirit, but Sam can almost feel the warmth of the hand he rests on Sam’s knee.

“You’re still here,” Sam slurs and it sounds too loud in the quiet room.

“Did he just say something?” Ms. Watts asks. The sounds of packing cease abruptly. Dean curses and stands up and moves out of view.

“I don’t know. He may still be dreaming,” Toni says.

“Dean wh-”

“Shhh, Shh Sam.” Dean cuts him off and comes back to kneel beside him again. “Anything you say to me they can hear, so you got to stop talking. Ok?”

Dean sets his hand back on Sam’s knee but Sam can’t feel it anymore.

“I think you’re waking up. Ok, listen up Sam, we’re close, but Benny lost your scent somehow, and we’re running short on leads, so you’ve got to help us out.”

Someone moves behind Sam and fear spikes through him, waking his body up even further. The ropes are cut from Sam’s arms, releasing him from the chair. Dean fades out to almost nothing, the hint of his shape dancing like heatwaves in the air.

“Hey,” he says, sharp but muted, as if Sam is hearing him from underwater, “Just don’t go finishing the trials until I find you, ok? I'm coming for you.”

Sam wakes up to the sound of footsteps retreating up the stairs, and the door being bolted. He stumbles up from the chair and climbs onto the cot. He curls up in the corner, his back to the wall, and pulls the blanket up to his chin. He watches the stairs for a long time, before the fever and exhaustion from the trials drag him down into a dreamless sleep.

…

Sam wakes up nearly twelve hours later, to Ms. Watts telling him they’ve secured a demon and a church. It’s time for the third trial. Dean asked him to stall, but the train's already in motion and nothing he can say would derail it. Ms. Watts walks behind Sam, hustling him outside toward the black painter’s van. An idea sparks in his mind. Maybe there is something he can do.

Sam slips the meat of his palm into his mouth and bites down until he tastes blood. He smears his bloody palm along the outside of the van as he’s shoved inside. That should give Benny something to track, something that can’t be smothered by the shackle around Sam’s ankle.

When Sam steps out of the van, the evening sun hangs low in the sky. The magic hour when golden light slants through the trees and turns the world soft, blurring the lines between light and shadow. The little white church they commandeer is on the outskirts of town, surrounded by woods on three sides with a short walkway that leads from the road straight to the entrance stairs.

There is no parking lot, just a maze of tire ruts in the wide, dirt shoulder where cars park along the road. Sam can picture them lined up along both sides, the silent race that must occur every Sunday to get there early enough for a spot near the church. Piety measured by the distance from fender to church door. Inside, the church is lit by low hanging incandescent lights and the flickering of candles. Stained glass windows look down on the sanctuary, the light of the evening sun making the colors rich, painting them in a long stretch across the wooden floor.

There are salt lines along the doors and windows and the pews have all been pushed against the walls, leaving the center of the space free for the devil’s trap. A chair is anchored in the center of it. A demon wearing a woman with dirty blond hair matted by blood to the back of her skull is shackled at throat and wrists and ankles to a bolt in the floor, the chains woven through the sturdy metal legs of the schoolhouse chair.

Sam steps into the confessional, bows his head over his folded hands, and prays for the forgiveness of his sins. For not finishing the trials last time, for loving his brother too much and putting his safety before the world, for releasing the Darkness, for wanting to do it all over again, for wanting to stay. To meet Mary. To live and die beside Dean. He confesses his selfish heart and begs to be forgiven for still wanting more than what he has been given.

He runs his finger along the curve of the plastic tea light through the fabric of his coat pocket. He never did figure out Chuck’s gift, never learned whatever lesson Chuck was trying to teach. He prays for forgiveness for that, too.

Finally, he prays that the soul of the woman tied to that chair has already departed. Sam doesn’t know what would happen to her soul when the demon is made human inside her body. The thought of it makes him shudder in fear.

When he leaves the confessional, more operatives have filled the small sanctuary. The two men who brought Sam in with Ms. Watts stand guard by the front door. Two more stand guard at the side doors on either side of the chancel. Toni and Ms. Watts wait by the devil’s trap. Toni stares straight ahead, refusing to acknowledge Sam. Jane stands beside the altar where the syringes lie in their leather casing, she nods at Sam, the corner of her mouth turning up in the hint of a smile. Sam is glad to see one friendly face.

Sam joins Jane at the altar and picks up the first syringe. “Here we go,” he says.

A sudden pounding shakes the front doors of the church, “Hurry, please,” a man shouts.

“That’s Lucas,” one of the guards says, bewildered.

“Hurry, hurry!” Lucas cries, beating on the door again. “There isn’t much time.”

Sam and Jane exchange a look, and dread creeps up Sam’s spine.

“Don’t open it!” Jane shouts, but it’s too late. The guard opens the door just wide enough for Lucas to slip through and he stumbles in, barely keeping on his feet. He’s clutching a phone in his hand and his eyes are wide in his dirty face. His hair is disheveled, hanging over the gash on his cheekbone.

“What are you doing here?” Toni demands.

“What I have to,” Lucas says. The phone in his hand rings and he holds it out to Sam. “It’s for you.”

Sam takes it, knowing it can’t be anything good. It rings again, vibrating against his palm. A vaguely familiar number flashes on the screen and Sam’s heart thunders in his chest as he answers it.

“Hello?”

“Hello, Moose.” Oh, fuck.

“Crowley.” Jane jolts beside him, turns to look at him with wide, fearful eyes. Toni draws her gun and Ms. Watts slips on a pair of deadly looking brass knuckles.

“Did you really think I wouldn’t find out that you were doing the trials? Again?” Crowley asks, smug and self-assured.

Sam mouths ‘demon blade’ to Jane and she runs to the altar to grab it.

“Took you long enough,” Sam says, stalling. Jane comes back with the blade, hands it to Sam along with her busted glasses, the ones Sam used in the first trial.

“It did take some time to track down my missing hellhound. Good thing I found your pal Lucas here. He told me all about his little scheme but couldn’t tell me what became of my pet,” Crowley says. “Then he mentioned you and it didn’t take long to put two and two together. He’s refreshingly self-serving, sold you lot out in a minute flat. Couldn’t have found you without him.”

“Why don’t we make a deal, Crowley? I stop the trials, you let us live,” Sam says, watching as Toni backs Lucas into a corner at gun point.

Crowley’s laugh crackles across the phone.

“Fool me once,” Crowley says, “I’m keeping myself and the rest of my demons far away from you. Oh, and Sam? Don’t worry about the hellhound, I’ve got plenty more.”

A howl rings out, piercing the tense silence in the church. A chill shivers down Sam’s spine and his eyes fly to the doorway, remembering too late the way Lucas stumbled into the church. The salt line is broken.

The doors burst inward, flying off their hinges and taking out the two men guarding them. Twin whuffs of air stir through the dust and salt in the doorway, low growls rumble through the floorboards. Two hellhounds, one demon-killing knife. They’re screwed. No one moves a muscle, afraid to draw the hounds’ attention.

Sam looks out through the open door. Half a dozen demons wait on the walkway to mop up anyone who tries to escape. Crowley is standing on the road, phone held to his ear, his other hand casually tucked in his pocket.

“You know, I might actually miss you. Ah, well. Sick ‘em boys.”

The hellhounds stalk into the room, their claws leaving furrows in the floor. Sam pushes Jane behind him, and fumbles the glasses on. One of the hounds sinks its teeth into the unconscious guard’s neck, ripping his head clean off. The other hound charges through the room, jumping onto the chancel and barreling into one of the men standing guard there. Gunfire and screams fill the air. The hound by the front door lifts its shadowy face, blood dripping from its maw, and it zeros in on Sam. It stalks him as he moves in a slow circle, pulling Jane along behind him.

“Skirt the wall, get to the door,” Sam says, “Run, don’t try to fight.”

He pushes Jane to the wall, and the hellhound snarls and lunges for Sam. A shotgun blast smashes into its face and it stumbles aside.

“Consecrated iron, you son of a bitch,” Dean says and Sam’s heart stutters in his chest. Dean stands in the doorway, wearing the thick-rimmed pair of glasses from the Impala’s trunk.

The hound turns on Dean, charging forward. Sam lunges, catches it off guard. He plunges the demon-killing knife into it’s neck. Not a killing blow, but it knocks them both to the ground. Sam rides it down with a hand clenched in its hide. He pulls the knife out of the hound’s neck and drives it down into its eye. Light flares beneath its skin and it goes limp.

When Sam looks up, the room is in chaos. The waiting demons have stormed inside. Ms. Watts has Toni pushed behind her, taking on two demons with brutal efficiency. The last two guards are back on their feet, working together but barely holding their own against a demon. Dean’s squaring off with the other hellhound, crouched low and circling.

There’s a woman fighting another demon, she’s got short cropped, wavy blond hair. She takes a blow to the cheek, head snapping to the side and Sam sees her face. Mom. Sam’s breath catches at the sight of her. She flips the shotgun, drives her knee into the demon’s stomach, it doubles over and she crashes the shotgun butt into the base of its skull.

The demon stumbles, but doesn’t go down. It comes up swinging and Sam takes off, running to Mary. She spins to the side, avoids a blow to her ribs. She catches the demon by the arms, wrenches it around until she has both arms pulled tight to its back, bracing them against her chest. Sam thrusts the blade between its ribs and Mary tosses the body aside.

“Mom,” he says, voice cracking.

“Fight now, talk later,” Mary says, flashing Sam a strained smile. But neither of them move away, too busy looking at each other. Sam doesn’t notice the demon coming up behind him until it’s grabbed his shoulder, knife swinging for his gut.

Jane comes flying out of nowhere and tackles the demon. They fall to the ground in a writhing heap.

“Help Dean,” Sam shouts to Mary, and runs to Jane’s side. He hauls the demon off her, stabs it through the back. He drops to his knees beside her.

“Hey, hey, you ok?”

She groans and rolls on her side. She grabs Sam’s ankle and Sam jerks in surprise. Jane pulls up his pant leg revealing the shackle and starts whispering a spell. The shackle glows red, and splits open, falling to the floor.

“You have to get out of here,” Jane says, “Go now.”

Sam scans the room. There’s only three demons left and the fighting will be over soon, one way or another. In the center of the church, Mary is helping Dean scramble out from under the corpse of the second hellhound. The path to the door is clear. Jane’s right they have to go.

“Take this,” he says, holding out the demon-killing blade to her. “As soon as it’s clear, get the hell out of here.”

She nods, and Sam climbs to his feet.

“Dean!” Sam shouts and makes for the door. Lucas is slumped against the doorjamb chest torn open from a stray shotgun blast, blood gurgling out of his mouth. Sam leaves him there and runs out into the evening air.

There’s a demon corpse on the path, smoke rising from the eye sockets. Cas’s handiwork, but Sam doesn’t see him anywhere. Dean and Mary run out of the church seconds later, and they all start down the path. A startled grunt has Sam and Dean spinning around to see Mary tumble to the ground. Toni leaps over her, gun pointing right at Sam’s chest.

“Don’t move.” She warns, hatred burning in her eyes. “You aren’t going anywhere.”

Behind her, Mary clambers to her feet, slips up beside her, smashes her shotgun butt into Toni’s temple. Toni crashes to the ground, gun flying from her hand.

Dean whips his gun up, brings it to bear on Toni. She freezes, hand hovering over her gun where it's fallen in the gravel.

“Dean, no.” Sam says.

Dean glances at Sam and Toni’s hand inches closer to her gun.

“Please,” Dean snarls, “give me a reason.”

Toni sits back on her heels, raises her hands above her head. Dean leaves his gun leveled on her. A tremor runs through the fist clenched at his side, but Dean’s gun hand is perfectly steady.

“Let’s go,” Mary says, running up beside Sam. The sounds of fighting from the church are dying down. They need to go before whoever’s left can come after them.

“Now,” Mary says, and she grabs Sam and drags him into a run.

“Dean!” Sam calls over his shoulder and Dean curses and leaves Toni behind, breaking into a run. They take off down the road, feet pounding the pavement. Mary takes point and Dean runs up beside Sam, matching his stride. They pass the van and Toni’s car. The tires are slashed.

“We should have grabbed a demon,” Sam says.

“We’ve got one,” Dean says as they come up on the Impala and a gray pickup truck parked in front of her. Benny and Cas are there and they’ve got Crowley trussed up in demon cuffs.

“Found Cas,” Benny says, grinning shark-toothed and bloody as they shove Crowley into the truck and climb in after him.

A manic laugh bubbles out of Sam’s chest, and Dean gives him a light shove.

“We’ve got to move, Sammy.”

Sam slides into the passenger seat of the Impala, feeling about ten steps behind the plot.

…

Dean peals out of the shoulder, taking the lead. They fly through the town, through a series of quick turns, winding along back roads on a clearly pre-planned route, but Sam is so turned around that he wouldn’t know what direction they were going if it weren’t for the setting sun. They pull onto a road that cuts through a dense woods and then off into a dirt parking area for a trail head, the turn barely visible through the thick shrubs that crowd along the road’s edge.

Dean parks the car and turns to Sam. “We’ll do the first one here. Ready?”

“Let’s get this done.” Sam says and hands Dean the shotgun from the foot well.

When they get out of the car, Benny and Cas are climbing out of the pick-up truck. Mary gets the holy water from the trunk and sets about consecrating the ground. Dean pulls out the set of eight syringes wrapped in their black leather case. He hands them to Sam with a tense nod, then turns to Benny. They exchange a few words too low to hear, but Benny nods and heads around to the back of the truck, scanning the road through the woods, his nose lifted to scent the air.

“Done,” Mary says.

Cas nods and opens the back door of the truck, pulling Crowley out into the open. He brings him into the center of the consecrated ground. Crowley grimaces as they step over the circle of earth, wet and dark with holy water.

Sam lays one syringe against his arm, lines it up with his vein.

“Wait,” Dean grabs Sam’s forearm. “Is this really what you want?”

Want isn’t exactly the right word, but it isn’t exactly wrong either. So, Sam nods and presses the needle into his skin, draws up his blood.

“What about what I want?” Crowley spits.

“You forget. I saw you last time.” Sam advances on Crowley, syringe held before him like a threat. “By the end you wanted to be cured.”

“That wasn’t me!” Crowley snarls. He struggles against Cas. Cas grunts, frees one hand to force Crowley’s head to the side.

“No,” Sam says, “Maybe not. But it will be.” He slams the syringe into Crowley’s neck and depresses the plunger. It feels like half his strength leaves his body, sucked away like his blood through the needle. When he pulls it free, he stumbles back a half step and Mary steadies him with a hand to his back.

He smiles at her, knows it must look grisly on his pale face with shadows weighing down his eyes and hanging like curtains from his cheekbones. But she smiles back, nods at him like maybe she’s proud, and that’s a thing Sam never thought to see in his whole life.

Dean’s watching the whole thing with a look of grim determination on his face and a shotgun in his hands.

“Benny?” Dean calls.

“Still good,” Benny says, “but we better get to moving.”

“Let’s go,” Dean says.

They pile back into the cars and get back on the road. Dean leads them south and west on the back roads, skirting anything that remotely resembles a town. Mary has a map open in the back, working out alternate routes. Sam lets his eyes fall closed and focuses on the task at hand. One treatment down, seven to go. Seven hours left to ride through the settling dark with his brother by his side.

…

Sam leans back against the side of the Impala next to Dean. Benny and Cas are busy pulling Crowley out of the pickup and Mary is consecrating the ground between the two vehicles. Dean glances at Sam and then away, fiddles with the shotgun in his hands. Silence stands between them as solid and stubborn as another Winchester.

“You going to talk to me at all?”

Dean scoffs, bitter. “What am I supposed to say?”

Sam sighs and rolls his head back. It’s full night now, and the moon has risen, all but full itself, washing out the stars caught in its halo of silver light. Not bad, as far as last nights go. “I don’t know,” Sam swallows his disappointment and pushes off the Impala to go help Mary. “Goodbye, maybe.”

Dean’s shotgun clatters to the ground. He swings around to face Sam, fists his hands in Sam’s shirt. Shakes him. Slams Sam back against the side of the Impala.

Mary starts toward them, but Cas blocks her, holds her back with an outstretched arm and a shake of his head.

Dean’s panting like he just chased down a Wendigo, his face twisted in a rictus of pain and anger and underneath that a churning fear. Sam’s heart breaks open in his chest. Dean shakes Sam again, desperate. “Fuck you,” he says broken voiced, “How could you do this to me? I was gonna find you. I was coming for you.”

Sam reaches up, wraps his fingers, warm and gentle, around Dean’s wrists, feels his pulse racing there. “I know,” Sam says feeling like he could shake apart. “I’m sorry.” Dean’s grip loosens, blood flushing back into his knuckles.

“Dammit, Sammy. Goddammit.” Dean slides his hands up over Sam’s shoulders, pulls him into a fierce and crushing hug. Sam wraps his arms around Dean, buries his face in Dean’s neck and breathes him in, lets the strength of him sink into his bones and seal up his fault lines. Dean’s hand settles on the back of his head, keeps Sam right there in his heat and his scent.

“I have to finish this. It’s my second chance,” Sam says, mouth pressed against the collar of Dean’s shirt.

Dean steps back, holds Sam by the shoulders and looks him in the eyes. “I know.”

It gets easier after that. They finish the third injection with Mary on point, Benny watching the rear, and Cas on Crowley control. Dean stays beside Sam, steadies his hand as he draws his own blood. When they pile back into the cars, the quiet isn’t so oppressive, the tenseness bleeds out of Dean’s jaw. He even flashes Sam a half smile. Five hours left.

…

“I don’t even get to know you?” Mary asks into the quiet of the car, voice colored in shades of disbelief and frustration.

Sam twists around in his seat to look at her. He wishes things were different, but they aren’t. This is what they have. The long stretch of nighttime blacktop, a sky bursting with stars unspooling above them, and a race against time and discovery. “Well.” he says trying for a teasing tone. He nods at Dean. “He’d say I’m a geek who never remembers the pie.”

“A nerd,” Dean says. “You’re a nerd, Sam. Who, I must admit, occasionally remembers the pie.”

“Ok,” Mary says, warming to the subject. “What else?.”

Dean glances over at Sam, giving him the opportunity to step in, but Sam grins and waves him on.

“Let’s see. His favorite color is plaid.”

“That’s not a color,” Mary laughs.

“Try telling Sam that.”

“Oh, come on! You are wearing plaid right now.” Sam says, waving at the shirt peeking out from beneath Dean’s jacket.

“Hush, I’m trying to paint a picture here.” Dean flashes Sam a grin. “He has terrible taste in basically everything. Music, haircuts, food, you name it. I mean his diet is a disgrace. It’s 85% rabbit food, easy.”

Sam snorts. “Just because I don’t eat bacon cheeseburgers for every meal of the day does not make me a disgrace.”

“Excuse me. Cheeseburgers are one of the major food groups. Right up there with peanut m&ms and pie. Back me up here Mom.” Dean’s really getting on a roll now, creases around his eyes coming out to play.

“I’ve always been more of a meat and potatoes kind of girl, myself. Sorry Sam.”

“See I knew it!” Dean crows. “If you think it’s bad now. You should have seen him growing up. Kid was a shrimp ‘til what, summer after your freshman year?”

Sam nods. He remembers that summer. He started out at perfect hair ruffling height and ended up tall enough to look Dean straight in the eye.

“Then you couldn’t keep him fed. He’d eat everything in sight. He’d eat the damn table if there wasn’t enough food on it. I mean this kid could pack it away. Grew like a damn weed. Could never find pants that fit right. The waist was too big or the legs were too short. Now look at him," Dean says, trailing off as heaviness creeps into the edges of his voice.

“See? Not missing much.” Sam says and laughs awkwardly, desperate to cling to the dissolving good humor. “You’ll be glad to see me go.” Sam knows it’s a mistake the moment it leaves his mouth. Whatever chance he had of reclaiming the good mood of the car evaporates.

“Fuck.” Dean says under his breath, the steering wheel creaking with the force of his grip.

“Don’t joke about that.” Mary says. “I may not know you, but you’re still my son and I have always loved you. I don’t know if meeting you now, like this, was a gift or a curse, but I’m not sorry for it. My boys grew up good.” She smiles through watery eyes. “Don’t you dare joke about what you are to us.”

Sam’s chest feels stuffed full of cotton. He opens his mouth but he doesn’t know what to say to that.

“Ok?” Mary asks.

“Ok, Mom,” Sam says, swallowing past the lump in his throat.

The loud clanging of the alarm on Dean’s cell, breaks through the quiet. Dean’s shoulders jerk in surprise, but his hands stay steady on the wheel as he eases the impala to the side of the road. The truck pulls up behind them. It’s time for the fifth injection. Three hours left.

...

When Benny drags Crowley out of the truck for the seventh injection, he’s got a bloody lip. He grins at Sam, and Sam scoffs and shakes his head. Crowley, for his part, is bleeding from his hairline and thoroughly gagged.

Benny brings Crowley into the circle of ground that Mary is bent over as she consecrates it.

Cas and Dean are conferring with their heads bent between cars. They keep shooting glances in Sam’s direction and Sam is too distracted by trying to figure out what they’re saying, to pay attention to the way Crowley is wriggling in Benny’s grip.

The quiet snick of metal makes Sam’s stomach drop and he turns to see the glint of silver light on the open cuff dangling from Crowley’s wrist. Crowley rears back, trying to headbutt Benny in the face. Benny twists hard to the right, avoiding the blow. His fingers lose their grip on Crowley’s jacket and Crowley lunges forward, reaching for the gun tucked in Mary’s waistband.

“Dean!” Sam shouts, running toward them, but there’s nothing he can do.

Crowley barrels into Mary, but she manages to keep her feet. She spins, elbow to Crowley’s gut. He doesn’t even try to dodge, just takes the blow and snags the gun, staggering back. He spins, shoots Benny point blank in the shoulder. Benny falls back, stumbles into the car.

He turns the gun on Mary. “Stay back,” he shouts. And everyone freezes. Everyone except Mary. She ducks down and lunges forward, catching Crowley’s wrist and forcing it up. The gun goes off just over her shoulder. They grapple for it, but Crowley’s weak from the cure and Mary nearly has control back.

A look of anger flits across Crowley’s face and disappears. He turns, looks Sam in the eye and smirks.

Fear punches through Sam’s system, heart kicking into overtime. “Stop him!”

Benny’s already got a hand on Crowley’s shoulder, Cas and Dean, spitting curses, are right behind him. But it’s too late. Crowley surges forward, the gun disappearing between the press of their bodies. A shot rings out.

Mary lurches back. Crowley still has the gun in his hands, and it’s pointed at his own chest, center mass.

“Ow. That bloody hurts,” he says. Blood wells out of the wound, sluggish, but there. Sam has never seen Crowley bleed like that. The gun clatters to the ground. Crowley pokes at the wound and winces.

“Well, there you have it, Moose.” Crowley’s eyes are blazing, his voice rises to a hoarse commanding shout. “Did you really think I was going to let you turn me into a sniveling human?”

Benny and Cas grab him, and Dean tosses them rope from the Impala’s trunk to bind his hands.

“Wound like this, I’ll die the second I turn human. You cure me, you kill me, Sam. Much as you hate me, are you really ok killing a newly fledged human?”

Sam wants to laugh. It’s laughable that Crowley thinks this makes any kind of difference. But Sam is queasy, his hands clammy and shaking. He thought he was so righteous, curing a demon. God he’s an idiot. Nothing is ever that simple. Sam swallows back the bitter saliva flooding his mouth, tries to school the shock from his face.

“Alright so you cure him, then he dies. This trial still gonna work if he’s dead by the time you finish it?” Benny asks.

“If he even survives that long. At this point, he’s so close to human that he could walk right through a devil’s trap.” Sam says. Dean flinches, eyes darting away.

“And if he’s that human, he might die before we can finish the cure,” Mary says.

“Cas, can you heal him?” Dean asks.

Cas places his hand on Crowley’s chest and closes his eyes. “The changes to his body are too pervasive. If I heal him, I risk interfering with the cure.”

“Dammit,” Sam curses, sinking his hands into his hair. It shouldn’t matter. How many times has he threatened to kill Crowley, how many times has we wanted to but held back for the good of the mission. Now the mission dictates that Crowley must die and Sam’s stomach is twisting. He wanted to kill demon Crowley, the King of Hell, but the tearful repentant Crowley that Sam met two years ago? The human Crowley? It shouldn’t matter, but it does. Curing him means killing him and it feels like murder.

“So we scrap this one altogether, find us another demon and start again,” Benny says, but he sounds unsure and he’s trying to make it seem like he isn’t looking at Sam. He can probably smell it on Sam, how weak he is. How damaged.

“What demon would answer a summons from us? And besides,” Mary says, laying a hand on Sam’s shoulder. “I don’t think Sam has another eight rounds in him.”

Dean gives Sam an assessing look. Sam knows what he’s seeing, has been avoiding his own reflection in the Impala’s windows. He’s pale and sweaty, gaunt and red-nosed with bruises blooming under his eyes. Unstable on his feet. Weak. He won’t survive another round. It’s Crowley or it’s failure and either way Sam dies. Dean knows it, too. His eyes flicker to Cas, but Cas just shakes his head.

“Son of a bitch!” Dean whirls around and aims a vicious kick at the truck’s tire. He grabs Crowley by his lapels and snatches him out of Benny’s grip, shakes him. “If you fucked this up for us, I swear to God, I will get someone to bring you back just so I can kill you myself.”

Crowley whimpers. He actually whimpers. There’s real fear in his wide eyes and Dean jolts like he’s been slapped.

“Coward,” Dean says, a hint of disbelief in his voice. He hands Crowley back off to Benny. “Get him out of my sight.”

Dean storms off to sit in the car while Mary binds Crowley's wound and Sam finishes the injection.

When they head back to the Impala, Sam catches a glimpse of Dean’s face and he looks lost in a way that Sam has never seen before. He never wanted to do this to Dean. Force him to watch Sam march to his death. It’s like standing in that alley in Detroit, waiting to face the devil all over again. Except this time there’s no devil to triumph over, no destiny to avert. It’s just Sam withering away, hoping that maybe, just maybe he can leave the world a safer place for his family. One hour left.

…

Twenty minutes down the road, Dean pulls over by an overgrown, dirt two-track. He signals out the window to Benny who nods and backs the truck down the track. Dean twists to look over the back of his seat, inching the Impala over the rough terrain until they turn a corner, making both cars invisible from the road.

They clamber out, grabbing supplies from the trunk of the Impala. Sam reaches for the bag with the syringes, but Mary grabs it up before he can lay a hand on it. She slings it over her shoulder and shoots Sam a smile.

“I’ve got this, you just focus on getting yourself to the finish line. We’ve got a bit of a walk ahead of us.”

Sam nods and closes the trunk. They meet the others next to the truck. Cas and Benny have Crowley slung between them. His head is sagging, but his chest still expands with breath beneath the bandage covering his wound. Dean settles the bag of weapons over his shoulder and gestures to the back of the truck with his shotgun.

A few yards behind the rear fender of the pick-up, the road disappears, shrinking down into a footpath. The moonlight makes it easy to follow the path, even through the trees, and they forgo the flashlights. Sam focuses on putting one foot in front of the other. His bones feel fragile as spun glass and every step shoots spirals of pain through his body. It gets a little better when Dean drops back to walk beside him, adjusts his stride so they’re moving together, shoulders brushing.

Ten minutes later, they emerge into a small clearing where a one-room, wooden church stands edged in the silver light of the moon.

“How’d you find this place?” Sam asks.

Mary glances over her shoulder. “My Dad and I used it as a safe house on a hunt once. I figured it would still be out here. A little worse for wear, but it’s about as off the grid as you can get.”

Sam and Dean share a look, neither of them thrilled at the reminder of Samuel, but this church is perfect for staying under the radar. The woods around it smell of rich earth and growing things. Virginia Creeper climbs up the sagging walls, what’s left of the roof is covered in moss and lichen.

Walking into the church feels a little like walking into the earth, cool and damp. Sam looks around and smiles to himself. He likes it here. It’s not a bad place to die, really, and how many people get to go out surrounded by family. He can even see a slice of the Milky Way right through a hole in the roof. Yeah, this is the place.

When he looks back down, Dean is watching him, eyes shining in the gloom. Sam looks back. What else can he do? Twenty minutes left.

…

Sam drops the empty syringe onto the altar, the final injection complete. His head is swimming, but he picks up the book with the exorcism in it. He can hardly focus on the pages in front of him. No matter how hard he blinks, he can only read three letters at a time, the rest of the page fuzzes out in a hazy glaucoma. But Sam knows his Latin and he remembers enough of the exorcism from last time to piece together the proper words.

“ _Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus, hanc animam redintegra. Lustra._ ” Sam lets the book fall to the ground from his nerveless fingers, his arms already glowing.

He staggers the last step toward Crowley. A wave of dizziness hits and his knees go out from under him. Dean is behind him in an instant, catching him under the arms.

“Whoa, easy,” Dean says.

Sam leans back into him for one long moment. This is it. Zero hour. Sam is walking into an eternity of nothingness and this is his last moment with his brother. So he savors the feel of Dean’s warmth soaking into his back, and closes his eyes. Dean lets out a shuddering sigh against the shell of his ear and the vitality of it shivers down his neck and passes away. It’s time. Any longer and Sam will lose his nerve. He steadies himself, plants his feet and steps free of Dean’s hands.

There’s no way to know how this will go down, how quickly the power of the spell will rip through him and leave him emptied out. Dead, he reminds himself. This is no time for euphemisms. Say goodbye now or never say it.

Benny is still standing guard by the door, but he’s half facing the room, head bent, torn between watching the proceedings and offering them some kind of privacy. Sam nods at him, and Benny touches the brim of his cap, tilts his head in acknowledgment. It’s good that he’s here, Sam thinks. Dean will need some kind of brotherhood when he’s gone and between Benny and Cas they can keep Dean alive. Sam is sure of it.

Mary and Cas stand behind Crowley’s chair, just outside of the devil’s trap. Sam likes the way Cas stands close to Mary, already accepting her as part of their family. Of course, it could be his lingering inability to comprehend personal space, but Sam wants to believe it is something more than that.

Mary stands as solemn witness to Sam’s last act. Her face is set in rigid lines, but there is softness in her eyes. He’s glad she’s here, too, so grateful to have met her. He smiles at her, and her answering smile is small and shaky.

Finally, Sam looks over his shoulder. Dean’s eyes are hard, brow creased and jaw clenched tight. Sam wants to say something to him, but he’s afraid to interrupt the exorcism.

“Kick it in the ass, Sammy,” Dean says. And yeah, Sam can do that.

He draws the knife across his his hand, blood welling into his cupped palm. Crowley struggles, fights against himself. Wanting to survive, wanting to be redeemed. His struggles turn rabid when Sam enters the Devil’s trap. He fights Sam’s grip on his jaw, but when Sam tilts his head back and pushes the gag out of the way, he goes still and parts his lips, ready.

“ _Lustra_ ,” Sam says, and slaps his bloody hand against Crowley’s mouth.

Crowley’s body tenses, his eyes flash red, and then, like ink in water the color swirls and softens until it dissipates, leaving behind wide, fearful, and human eyes. Crowley sags in the chair and the breath leaves him in a sigh. Castiel lays his hand on Crowley’s head, and closes his eyes briefly. He shakes his head and steps back, leaving Crowley’s corpse slouched in the chair. Just like that Crowley’s gone and Sam’s the one who killed him. Tied him to a chair, and turned him into something he didn’t want to be. How many times has someone tried to do that to Sam and now he’s gone and done it to someone else. But it means something, it has to mean something. Sam clings to that idea with gritted teeth.

“He made his choice,” Mary says.

Sam grimaces but nods. There is more to be done and time grows short. The London Chapter could find them at any moment and Sam needs to finish this.

“It’s going to be okay,” Sam says, scanning the room. He turns to Dean, but he can’t hold his brother’s gaze and their eyes slip away from each other. Even here, even now, what lies between them is too much to name and too much to face.

Sam takes a breath, recites the spell, “ _Ka na am dar_.”

The light under Sam’s skin intensifies, glowing firebrand red. Flames lick through his veins, knock the breath out of him and he falls to his knees. He feels like he’s being atomized, immolated by the heat of the power coursing through him.

Dean calls his name, muffled and distant. He slides to his knees in front of Sam, reaches out to grab him by the arms. Dean hisses when he touches Sam, snatches his hand back, his fingers red and blistered. Steam rises from Sam’s skin. A fire Dean can’t save him from rages through his body.

Waves of pain crash through Sam and he hunches over, slams his hands to the ground. The second they make contact the light shoots down his arms, out of his palms, and into the floor, taking the fire with it. It arcs and twists through the ground in glowing threads like the spread of tree roots. A clap of thunder shakes the church and shatters the windows.

Sam feels it through his palms, a shiver of the earth, in his ears rings the laborious screech and clang of the Hell gates slamming shut. It’s done.

He gasps in a breath and chokes on it. Great, hacking coughs wrack his body, his chest tight and head pounding with the need for air. His throat burns and his stomach heaves. Something deep inside of him shakes loose.

“Jesus, Sam.” Dean says, he leans over Sam and wraps an arm around his shoulders.

A final, shattering cough strips Sam’s throat raw and a mouthful of blood splatters across the floor. There, in the center of the puddle is something solid and angular, dark red like an uncut ruby. Sam knows immediately what it is, he can feel it, or rather the absence of it, a weight he’s been carrying his whole life lifted away.

Dean pulls Sam back upright so he rests against his side, held there by an arm around his waist.

“What is that?” Benny asks.

It’s Azazel’s blood, crystallized and hardened from decades inside Sam, infecting him. And it’s gone, finally expelled. The seed from which all the evil in Sam has taken root, and there it lies discarded on the floor. Years and years of being dirty, unclean, are cast out and for one glorious moment, Sam is purified.

“It’s gone. It’s finally gone,” Sam says and his eyes well with grateful tears.

“Sammy?”

“The demon blood. I can’t feel it anymore.”

Dean’s fingers tighten on Sam’s shoulder, digging into the muscle. “Jesus fuck,” he says. Sam might laugh at that if he weren’t so wrung dry. Every last drop of his energy poured into the earth, and somehow despite his blood and his sin and his mistakes, somehow it’s enough to slake the hunger of Hell and slam the gates closed forever. He did it. His family gets to live in a world without demons. It’s worth the cost.

Dean is shaking, fine tremors passing from him into Sam’s aching body. “Cas, do something, man,” Dean begs. But it isn’t going to work, and they both know it.

“Hey, I’m fine. It’s ok. It’s going to be ok,” Sam says, but his vision is going dark, and he knows what comes next. In the corner of the church, there’s a shadow, the shape of a woman leaning against the wall. Every moment she becomes more substantial, the watchful tilt of her head, the curl of her hair. She hums a slow and patient song. Sam knows what comes next.

His body is weak and even staying on his knees, leaning his weight against Dean is too much effort. His muscles shiver and quake. His head falls forward, neck too weak to support it.

“Ok, alright, here.” Dean says and shifts back, lays Sam down so his head is in Dean’s lap. He curls down over him, crosses his arms over Sam’s chest, blocking out the rest of the world, like he can shield Sam from what’s coming.

“I’m here. I’m here. Not going anywhere,” Dean is whispering into the quiet space he built for them. It’s getting hard to see Dean’s face properly, black creeping steadily into Sam’s vision, the light of the world fading out. He blinks and strains against the encroaching dark, but he can barely see the shine of Dean’s eyes. It’s not enough. He wants one last look and then he’ll be ready to leave. Just one last look to carry with him when he goes.

 _When all other lights go out_ , Sam thinks, and fumbles for his pocket. His fingers are clumsy and stiff, but he manages to wrap them around Chuck’s gift. He pulls out the electric tea light and runs his thumb along the plastic until he feels the switch and flicks it on. A soft glow suffuses the blackness, and though the rest of his sight remains dark, Dean’s face is radiant in the gloom. The little candle grows warm in Sam’s hand and he clutches it to his chest. He takes a long look at his brother, the red-rimmed green of his eyes, and wishes he could stay. The candle pulses warm in his hand and he smiles at Dean.

“No. No. Don’t go, Sammy. Not without me,” Dean pleads.

Sam’s eyes slip shut without him noticing, Dean’s face an imprint of light behind his eyes as he sinks into the restful dark. The last thing he hears is the faded echo of Dean sobbing his name.


	4. Chapter 4

There is a bright, burning point of pain somewhere in the center of Sam. He can’t see, can’t move and for a wild, horrifying moment, he is certain that Billie has thrown him back in the cage, but the blistering cold doesn’t come. When the wave of panic passes, he can hear familiar voices.

“Dean, brother, we’ve got to go. They’re getting close,” Benny says.

“Good,” Mary says, her voice is thick with emotion and an anger Sam has never heard there. “We have unfinished business.” The sound of her chambering shells in her shotgun echos through the room.

“This is not what Sam would want. He would want you to get to safety. He would not want anyone killing in his name,” Cas says.

“How would you know?” Dean shouts. “He’s my brother. I raised him. Me. Where were any of you, huh? Nowhere. It was him and me. So how the hell would any of you know what he wants?” The room descends into tense silence. Dean’s ragged breath is so close to Sam that he’s certain he should feel it, but there’s nothing. “Shit. I – I don’t mean that. Just go if you want to. I can’t leave him, not yet.” Sam knew he was leaving Dean, he knew it would hurt, but he never thought he’d have to stay and hear it. He struggles in vain to reach out to Dean.

“We ain’t leaving him. He’s coming with us,” Benny says. “But you said you owed me once, and this is how you repay it. You let us get you both out of here and then-”

The humming that Sam heard earlier breaks through the conversation. Billie’s boots clack across the floor as she moves into the room.

“Hello again, Mary. Boys.”

“Who the hell might you be?” Benny asks.

“Reaper,” Mary hisses.

Sam doesn’t want to think about how Mary knows Billie. He struggles to move, to speak, but he is trapped. He doesn’t understand what is happening to him. He should be a spirit, standing there beside Billie, but he’s locked inside the cold coffin of his own dead body, unable to feel beyond its limits, unable even to feel the skin that used to be his own. He was promised the empty not this new kind of cage where all he has is the burning in his hand and the sound of his family suffering.

“Let me see him,” Dean says, voice cracking.

“You’re looking right at him,” Billie says, a sardonic lilt to her voice.

“Dammit! If you’re not going to let me see him, why show yourself? Are you here to gloat? To _savor_ it?”

“Nope. Just... waiting.”

“Enough games,” Cas says, “Give me Sam’s soul and let me take him where he belongs.”

“That’s not how this works,” Billie answers, “I made these boys a promise, didn’t I Dean.”

“The empty,” Dean says. There’s a strange waver in his voice, something quiet and distant that sparks panic in Sam. He’s heard this tone before, right before Dean breaks down. Right before he gives up.

“That’s right,” Billie says. “For both of you.”

Dean laughs bitterly. “Is that what you’re waiting for?” Dean asks. “You’ll take us both there. At the same time?”

“If I have both your souls at the same time.” Billie answers.

“Just like that, huh?” Dean draws his gun from his waistband. Sam can hear the hush of his moving shirts, the quiet snick of metal against Dean’s belt. The hammer clicks when he cocks it back, and Sam knows it’s not Billie who Dean turns his gun on.

“Dean!”

“No, don’t.”

“Wait.”

The frantic edge of everyone shouting has Sam desperately fighting, praying like he’s been afraid to this whole time. Please let Dean live. Please don’t do this. Please, please.

“Shut up!” Dean shouts “I’m trying to think.”

“Dean, honey, look at me. You don’t want to do this,” Mary pleads, the scrape of her jeans drags across the floor as she kneels beside Dean.

“I can’t let him go there, Mom. Not alone.”

“I was brought back for _you_. Don’t make me watch both my boys die.”

“He’s my brother,” Dean’s voice cracks and he offers no other answer. “Ok, Billie, you win. Just let me see Sam first.”

“Can’t do that. There are rules.”

“And I’m about to put a bullet in my brain and serve you up the two-for-one Winchester special. Bend them.”

“This isn’t a negotiation, Dean. Choose now or I’ll leave without you. Stay or go.”

Sam focuses all his energy on Dean, the burning in his hand – the candle, it must be the candle – intensifies. A blast of warmth suffuses Sam’s body, pulses outwards and then subsides.

“The hell was that?” Benny asks.

“It came from Sam.” Mary says, sounding closer, leaning over Sam.

“Cas?”

“I don’t know, but there is incredible power radiating from that candle. It feels like…”

“Like God,” Dean guesses. The point of heat in Sam’s hand shifts. “Shit, it’s hot. Okay. Okay, wait. Chuck gave this to Sam. It’s supposed to be a gift, right? What did he want you to do with it, huh, Sammy?" Dean asks, trailing off into thoughtful silence.

“Why won’t you let me see him?”

“Rules,” Billie says.

“Yeah, I don’t think so. You bent them before, getting us into hell. And if letting me see him meant you got both of us, I don’t think you’d hesitate. It’s not me you’re waiting for, is it? You don’t have him. You won’t let me see him, because you never had him. So either his soul was destroyed, or he hasn’t gone anywhere at all.

“Sammy? You still in there?” Dean asks, quiet and so close, barely more than a whisper.

Relief lights Sam up, but he still can’t move, can’t see, can’t feel anything but his burning hand, and panic is starting to creep back in because he might be here, but he is still dead in all the ways that matter.

“Stay or go. That’s what it’s all about, right. That’s what you said.” Dean says to the room at large, but then he’s back, speaking low and gentle. “I think, I think you have to choose, Sammy. I can’t tell you what to do here. God knows you’ve done enough. And if it’s time to rest, I get it. But you’ve gotta know I still… it’s okay if you can’t, but I still...

“Hell, Sammy, it’s a brand new world, and you made it. We could figure it out, together. You and me. You just gotta come back to me.”

Sam understands now, what Chuck’s gift is. It’s a way out of the sacrifice that Sam was willing to make. It’s choice. Sam can be done with all the ugly things of the world or he can stay and struggle and scrap and _live_. With Dean. It’s the easiest choice Sam has ever made. _Dean_ he thinks and another flush of warmth spreads from the candle in response. He focuses on the power pulsing in his hand and pictures his brother, the strength of his hands, the sound of his laughter, the way his eyes light up when he cracks a terrible joke, and reaches for him, with everything he is he reaches, chooses Dean again, without fear or reservation. Without guilt.

The burning subsides, and the pins and needles of a waking limb arc through his hand, travel up his arms into his chest, and hit his heart like an electric shock. Sam gasps in a breath, his body arching painfully in Dean’s arms, heart stuttering to life in his chest.

His arms flail and his legs convulse as his body wakes up, blood pumping through his veins again. Strong hands hold him through it. When he finally falls still, every part of his body tingles from his toes to the roots of his hair.

He opens his eyes and sees Dean staring right back at him, tears streaming down his cheeks.

“Well,” Billie drawls, “can’t blame a girl for trying,” and disappears from the room.

…

Sam comes to with a jolt. He’s disoriented, upside down and bobbing around. He panics, kicks out and his knee connects with something soft that goes, “ _oof_ ,” and Sam realizes that he’s staring down the length of Castiel’s trench coat, as Cas holds him in a fireman’s carry.

“Be calm.” Cas says. “You are safe.”

“He awake?” Dean says, and circles around behind Cas. They’re moving through the forest and Dean has his gun drawn. They must be making their way back to the cars, making their escape before the Men of Letters catch up with them.

Sam lifts his head to catch Dean’s eye. “Hey, you back with us?”

Sam nods and tries to push himself out of Cas’s grip, but his muscles are watery and he can’t get any leverage.

“Easy,” Dean says, “you passed out.”

“‘m fine, I can walk.”

“You can barely keep your eyes open, man.”

And that may be true, but that doesn’t mean Sam appreciates the reminder. He flips Dean off.

“Fainting and having to be carried away like a damsel in distress? Never gonna live this one down, Sammy,” Dean says and pats Sam’s cheek. His hand lingers, fingers sliding down to trace along Sam’s jaw. His thumb comes to rest in the dip beneath Sam’s lower lip. Sam leans into the touch, until he gets dizzy and he can’t hold his head up anymore. He slumps down against Cas.

“I can walk,” Sam grumbles and promptly passes out.

…

Sam surfaces again in the front seat of the Impala, swimming up through a muddy haze. He finds himself curled against the door, head resting on the window.

He glances behind them, sees a set of headlights, and then catches Mary watching him.

“Hey, Sam,” she says.

“Hey, Mom,” Sam can’t help but smile back at her, just getting to say the word without sorrow feels like a gift.

“Where are Cas and Benny?”

“In the truck behind us,” Dean says and nods at the rear-view mirror.

“Ok.” Sam curls back against the window and watches the streetlights paint Dean’s face in shifting swaths of orange as they pass through a nowhere town on some county road studded with streetlights. Dean’s got an easy half smile on his face and he keeps stealing looks at Sam every few seconds. They pass through the town into the wide open dark of long-stretching fields. The moon casts silver light across the tops of the knee-high corn.

Hey Jude is playing low on the radio and Mary is humming along in the backseat. Everything has the glossed over edge of nostalgia, and it’s perfect. It feels so good it sets his chest to aching.

“Dreaming.” Sam says, exhaustion pulling at him, making his eyelids heavy.

“Nah, not dreaming.” Dean says. He sets a hand on Sam’s knee and squeezes, glances over and catches Sam’s eyes, smiles soft. “This is real. We’re going home, Sammy.”

The leather cushions creak as Mary leans over the front seat. She reaches out, tucks Sam’s hair behind his ear. “It’s alright. Go back to sleep. We’ll be here when you wake up.”

Mary sits back, and starts humming along with the Beatles again.

The sound of her voice melds with the thrum of their tires eating up the miles as the same mycelial network of back roads that carried him his whole life now lead him home.

...

Sam sleeps through most of the more than twenty hour drive home. But when they finally pull into the bunker’s garage, Sam is still so exhausted that he can't bring himself to open the car door. It’s Cas who comes around and opens the door, holding out his hand to Sam, pulling him to his feet.

“Sam,” he says, voice tight, regret and guilt warring on his face. Sam is so tired of seeing Cas wear that expression.

“Thanks,” he says and pulls Cas into a hug, “for looking for me.”

“Of course.” Cas wraps his arms around Sam, and Sam smiles.

Sam pulls away. “Ok, sleep now,” he says and heads for his room. He shares a smile with Mary as he goes, and a nod with Benny. It’s surreal to be back in the bunker. He never thought he’d see this place again. He makes it all the way to his bedroom door before he remembers that Lucifer was the last person in there. He hesitates in the doorway.

“You ok?” Dean asks, coming up behind him.

Sam just shrugs, not sure how to say what he’s thinking, not sure if he wants to.

“You could sleep in mine,” Dean offers, hesitant.

“Ok,” Sam says, a little too quick, a little too relieved, but Dean smiles and shakes his head, so it must be ok. “Go ahead, I’ll be there in a minute.”

Sam heads to Dean’s room and strips down to his boxers and t-shirt. He lays down on his side with his back to the door, not bothering to climb under the covers. Dean comes in a few minutes later, puttering around and shedding layers. He fills up a glass of water at the sink and sets it on the nightstand for Sam, then sits on the other side of the bed. Sam can hear him rubbing his eyes and yawning, but he doesn’t lie down.

There’s a strange tension in the room that makes Sam’s heart beat a little faster, makes a nervous sweat prick under his arms. It’s the dreams. Sam knows it is. It’s this thing between them that they’ve been dancing around for years and Sam doesn’t know what to do about it. Though he may not know how to fix the root cause, he can at least deal with the tension.

“I’ve been thinking about what Amara told me, about her and Chuck and I realized something,” Sam says, staring at the wall. “I’m pretty sure you saved the world by talking about your feelings.”

Dean laughs, long and low, and eases back on the bed, the tension between them disappearing.

“Don’t remind me,” he says, and rolls over so he’s on his side, spooned up behind Sam, but for the inches of space between them. His hand settles light as a feather on Sam’s waist. “Thought you were dead, Sammy.”

“I know,” Sam says, a tremor starting up under his skin. “I’m not though. I’m here.”

“Yeah,” Dean slides his arm around Sam’s waist and tugs him back so they’re pressed together. He’s warm and Sam wants to melt back against him, but he doesn’t want to push too far. Dean’s breathing is even and calm, but not deep enough to be asleep, and Sam soaks him in, remembering what it felt like to miss him, to desperately want to believe he was out there looking for him, even though it shouldn’t have been possible.

“You found me,” Sam whispers, not really intending to say it at all.

Dean’s arm tightens around him. “I said I would, didn’t I? I’ll always find you.”

Sam’s heart clenches and he nods, unable to find his voice. Dean’s hand runs up and down his side. Up to his ribs, down to Sam’s thigh. His fingers catch against the leg of Sam’s boxers and he leaves them there, rubbing against the soft skin, bunching up the fabric as his hand inches higher. Heat races through Sam’s body, spiraling through every place their bodies connect.

“Sammy,” Dean runs his hand up under Sam’s boxers pressing firm to the top of Sam’s leg, dragging soft back down against the sensitive skin on Sam’s inner thigh, fingers passing inches from Sam's cock, where it’s fattening up for his touch.

“Sammy, I want,” Dean says, voice breaking as his hips roll forward.

“Yes,” Sam says, blood pounding through his body.

Dean groans and slides his other arm under Sam’s neck, turning Sam’s head so he can lean over and kiss him, finally. Dean’s mouth is amazing, warm and soft, and minutes spin away as they rock together, tongues sliding and tasting. But the angle is awkward and Dean eventually pulls back.

His fingers stray to the hem of Sam’s shirt. “Can I?”

Sam nods and Dean strips him. He lays a pillow on the bed in line with Sam’s hips and nudges until Sam turns, settling over it, face down on the bed.

Dean strips down and rummages through the night stand, then crawls up between Sam’s legs, sliding his chest over Sam’s back until he can nose along Sam’s hairline, breathing deep. He kisses his way back down Sam’s spine and Sam hears the click of the lube opening and closing.

Slick fingers slide down his spine, down until they rub against his hole, pressing in firm circles that have Sam groaning and pushing his hips down into the pillow. Dean works his fingers into him slow, stroking and pressing until two slide in easily, then three. An ache builds in Sam’s gut at the stretch, the fullness, and his hips churn desperately against the bed. His cock is aching hard, soaking the pillowcase.

“Please,” Sam gasps.

Dean slips his fingers out and sits back. “God, fucking look at you,” he says, running a hand down Sam's thigh.

He slicks himself up and then the blunt head of his cock is pressing into Sam, forcing him open in a long, slow push that has him gasping and pressing his face into the mattress. God, Dean’s big and it feels like it goes on forever, one endless, sweet stretch.

When he’s fully seated, Dean spreads himself over Sam, props himself up on his arms. He presses his face into Sam’s neck, leaving kisses along his shoulder. He starts a steady rhythm. Sam flexes his back, arching to meet his thrusts and Dean grunts and speeds up. Sam’s already close, he wants it to last but it’s too good, Dean over him and in him and pressing his lips into Sam’s skin, whispering his name.

Dean’s thrusts get more forceful, pushing Sam up the bed until he braces an arm against the headboard, and Sam knows Dean is close. He can tell from the hitching breaths pressed into his neck. Dean stops, goes still, and Sam thinks he’s come, but he can feel the hand Dean has down between his legs, butting up against Sam’s ass. It takes him a moment to realize that Dean is gripping the base of his cock hard enough to keep himself from coming.

Dean withdraws in a slow, heavy drag, and presses his forehead between Sam’s shoulder blades, panting.

“Dean” Sam whines. His whole body is tense with the need to come. He can feel the fat, wet head of Dean's cock lying against the inside of his thigh.

“Not yet, Sammy. Not yet,” Dean pants into the back of Sam's neck, his breath stirring the fine hairs there.

“Oh fuck,” Sam's hips jolt forward, so turned on by the idea of Dean holding himself back to make it last, that he's immediately on the knife's edge of coming.

Dean grabs the base of Sam's dick, squeezes hard. “Stay with me, Sammy.”

He shifts his grip to Sam's waist and rolls him over onto his back. Sam shuffles so his hips are still on the pillow, lets his knees fall open wide.

“Yeah,” Dean says and stretches himself out over Sam's body. He brushes his nose along Sam's jaw, nips at his earlobe.

Sam gasps and sinks his fingers into the long strands on the top of Dean's head, fists his hand and drags Dean to his mouth. Dean groans at the soft press of their lips, pushes into Sam’s mouth and Sam kisses him deep and dirty. He gets caught up in it, losing time as he eats at Dean’s mouth, drawing him back every time he drifts away.

Dean runs his hand down the back of Sam's thigh and in to press against him where he's loose and wet and open.

Dean sighs into Sam's mouth and then pulls back to watch himself rub his dripping cock over Sam's hole before he thumbs the head back into Sam. He sinks in slow and steady, every nerve in Sam's body lighting up with the fullness of the stretch, the heavy weight of Dean inside of him.

Dean's eyes are half-lidded, mouth slack with pleasure, a crease of concentration between his eyebrows. Sam's never seen that look before, and his heart stutters with the wild joy of discovering something new between them.

When he's fully seated, Dean grinds his hips into Sam until Sam gasps and throws his head back.

“Yeah,” Dean says, “just like that.” He braces himself on his forearms, one on either side of Sam's head and sinks his hands into Sam's hair and holds him still for his mouth, biting at his bottom lip. He sets up a slow rhythm, gradually increasing until he's fucking Sam at a punishing pace, getting them both back on edge.

Sam slides his hands down Dean's back, down to grab his ass, feel the powerful flex of muscle as he works himself in and out of Sam. Sam pulls him in harder, urges him faster.

Dean groans, angles his hips until a bright burst of pleasure races down Sam's spine. Sam rubs his open mouth against Dean’s, too far gone to kiss him properly but desperate to stay near.

Dean shifts his weight and drags a hand down Sam's chest, sliding slick through the sweat pooling there, to grab Sam's cock.

Sam’s back arches, pleasure racing through him, spiraling out from the pool of heat low in his gut. Sam’s toes curl as he comes in thick spurts over Dean’s knuckles and onto his own stomach. His muscles clench around the girth of Dean sunk deep in him, and his breath hitches.

“Fuck, Sam,” Dean groans as his orgasm rips through him. He grinds his hips into Sam, works himself through it.

Dean stays there, after, propped up on shaking arms, looking right into Sam and there’s warmth and wonder in his eyes. It sets down roots in Sam, makes him believe that maybe they can make this work. He leans up to kiss Dean, wants to feed that belief right into his brother’s mouth.

…

Eventually Dean withdraws, careful to go slow, and Sam floats in a haze of satisfied pleasure as Dean moves around the room. He comes back to the bed, wipes Sam down with a warm washcloth before tossing it across the room, back into the sink.

“Three points.” Sam mumbles and Dean laughs and collapses onto the bed to lie shoulder to shoulder with Sam. Sam lets himself linger in that warm place of indistinct thought for as long as he can. But something that good can only last so long, and Sam’s mind starts turning over everything that’s happened to them, what it all means.

“What do we do?”

“Way to ruin the afterglow, Sammy,” Dean huffs. “Things will be easier without demons, that’s for damn sure. But there’s still plenty of things that go bump in the night. So we hunt. That is, uh, if you want to?” Dean says, voice trailing up in an uncertain question mark.

Sam listens to Dean pick at a loose thread in the sheet and thinks. What he wanted, when he thought Dean was gone, was to do something good. Whether that was tell the truth to the Brits or complete the trials. He still wants that, for the most part.

“I do. I just get tired sometimes.”

“Ok,” Dean says. “Ok, so we keep it simple. Salt and burns only until you’ve got your strength back. Until you’re ready.”

“Ok,” Sam says, and he really thinks it might be. “And if they come for us?”

“The Brits? I’d like to see them try.” Dean says, fierce anger running through his voice like an undercurrent.

“We shouldn’t underestimate them, Dean. They’re smart. They’ve got more people, more weapons, more knowledge. They know where the bunker is and how to get in it.”

Dean rolls onto his side, facing Sam, but he doesn’t respond. Sam stares at the ceiling, waits him out.

“You know, Mom’s amazing. She’s sharp, focused, and man is she strong. Things are tough for her, I know they are, but she’s got our back,” Dean says.

“Yeah.” Sam’s heart clenches in his chest, Mom such a new and terrifying idea.

“And Cas, man, he didn’t leave. Not once while you were gone. He was a man – angel, whatever – on a mission. I thought he might hoof it to heaven the second the gates were closed, but I think he wants to stay on earth for awhile, with us. And,” Dean says, voice gone hesitant, fingers clenching in the sheets. “Benny, too.”

“That’s good,” Sam says, turning to look at Dean, wanting him to know he means it, that Sam wants Benny around. The nervous look on Dean’s face makes him want to roll his eyes, but he settles for pressing his half smile into the pillow.

Dean lets out a quiet breath, the tension seeping from his body again. He reaches up, fingers carding through Sam’s hair to tuck it behind his ear.

“If they come, we’ll be ready,” Dean says. “It’s a brave new world, and we’re not alone anymore.”

…

Two weeks later, there’s a pounding on the bunker door. Dean draws his gun and Sam grabs a knife. They race up the stairs with Mary hot on their heels. Benny whistles, grabbing Mary’s attention and tosses her a shotgun. She snatches it out of the air as she climbs that last step, then stands flush with the wall next to the door, out of sight. Benny and Cas stay at the foot of the stairs, blades drawn.

Dean scans the room, nods, satisfied and they answer the door together. Jane stands on the other side, a military surplus duffel over one shoulder. The dark roots of her hair are showing, and Sam smiles to see it.

“You did survive. Good,” she says.

“So did you.” Sam had hoped, but he had no way of knowing.

She nods, reaches into the duffel. She pulls out her journal and sets the demon killing blade that Sam left in her care across the cover. It’s just a knife now, but Sam understands what it means between them.

She lays her hand across the hilt of the knife, presses it into the journal and looks Sam straight in the eye, “I want to do something real.”

Sam cocks an eyebrow at Dean. Dean looks Jane up and down, and when he turns back to see the lopsided smile on Sam’s face, he dips his chin in a nod.

“Ok,” Sam says, and opens the door wide. “It looks like we’ve got work to do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the longest thing I have written by a factor of ten, and it was very scary because of that. It also managed to became utterly self-indulgent by the end. I mean the whole last chapter is basically one really long epilogue, so if you made it to the end, I applaud you. I hope you found something in it that you enjoyed. I am very interested in constructive feedback, so please consider leaving me a comment here or messaging me on tumblr @AlulaSpeaks.


End file.
